




Class _bQjl 
Book__ JulH 



Seooncl Ed 



MARCH, 1863. 



HISTORY 



;Li 



DECLINE 



)MMERCIAL SLAVERY 






A R L) E . D 





Publisbe 






EXPLANATORY NOTE. 

In the latter part of 1860, and early in 1861, Mr. Edward E. Dunbar 
wrote a series of papers, five in number, known as The Mexican 
Papers. Under this title the present work appeared as No. 5, March, 
1861. It was the termination of the series, and written with reference to 
the impracticability of carrying the institution of slavery into any part of 
Mexico, or elsewhere, on this continent, beyond where it already exists. 
The title of the publication was one that recommended it to but a compa- 
ratively small circle of readers. Nevertheless, the first edition has been 
exhausted, and the increasing demand for this number from the general 
public is such that the publisher is induced to issue a second edition 
under its really more appropriate title of The History of the Rise 
and Decline of Commercial Slavery in America. 

The work is unique, and one of the most valuable on the subject of 
which it treats, ever issued from the press. 

New York, March, 1863 _ . 



. 



CONTENTS 



MEXICAN PAPERS, NO. V. 



PAG 

Editorial Note W't 

Rise and Decline of Commercial Slavery in America 181 

Origin of Slavery 181 

Mosaic Law of Slavery 182 

The New Era of Slavery — its Commercial Character 184 

Discovery of the West Coast of Africa by the Portuguese, 1471 184 

First Negro Slaves taken to Portugal 185 

Prince Henry's desire to save Negro Souls y 185 

The Introduction and Progress of Commercial Slavery in America 186 

Discovery of the New World by Columbus, 1492 -. 186 

Destruction of the Natives in the West India Islands 187 

The Mainland ravaged by the Spaniards for Indian Slaves to supply the West Indies. 187 
The Conversion of the Indians the Foundation of the Conquest — according to Ferdi- 
nand 188 

Rapid and unique method by which the heathen Indians were converted by the Con- 
querors , 188 

Noble efforts of Las Casas and his confreres to befriend the Indians 188 

First Importation of Negro Slaves into Hispaniola 189 

First Grant to import Slaves into Spanish Colonies given to De Bresa, 1517 190 

The action of Las Casas in this matter 190 

Increase in the Importation of Slaves 191 

First Importation of Negro Slaves into Mexico. 192 

Commencement of Slavery in Brazil, 1530 192 

Commencement of Slavery in Paraguy and Beunos Ayres 103 

Universal extension of Slavery, 1550 193 

The English enter upon the Slave-trade, 1562 194 

Queen Elizabeth knights the Pioneer in this Trade, and makes him Treasurer of her 

Nu vy 194 

First Sale of Negro Slaves in Virginia ] 95 

Puritans commence the Slave-trade, 1646 . ,^< 195 

Slavery established in several of the West India islands by the English, French, and 

Dutch 195 

Louis XIII. establishes Slavery in all the French Colonies by Royal Edict 195 

Charles II. of England grants a Monopoly of the Slave-trade, 1662 196 

The French u Senegal Company " 196 

The Spanish Asieuto Contract 196 



X, 



11 

PAGE 

The English obtain the Asiento Contract to supply the Spanish Colonies with Slaves, 

1713 197 

The Yellow Fever carried to Vera Cruz, Mexico, by an English ship loaded with 

Slaves 198 

The English House of Commons sustain the Slave-trade by Resolutions and Appropri- 
ations 198 

Extent of the English Slave-trade 198 

The English Government refuses to listen to the Protest of the American Colonies 

against the Slave-trade 198 

Official account of the Extent of the Slave-trade 199 

Culminating Period of Commercial Slavery in America 199 

Number of Slaves in America, 1790 201 

Status of Slavery in America, 1790 202 

Declaration of Independence 202 

The Romance of the Declaration, and the Reality of the Constitution 203 

Remarks on the Constitution 204 

Treaties recognizing Slaves as Property 205 

Purchase of Slave Territory by the Fathers 206 

The Constitution behind the Age 207 

Curious views of Henry VIII. on Slavery. 209 

Difficulties under which the Framers of the Constitution labored 209 

Decline of Commercial Slavery in America 

Philosophical Remarks 211 

Initiatory Measures of Abolition in Rhode Island 212 

Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts 213 

Initiatory Measures of Abolition in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, 211 

New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina 214 

\ Abolition of Slavery in New Hampshire 214 

VV Constitutional Slave trade, its Abolition by the United States, 1808 215 

H Who imported the Slaves 215 

Ordinance prohibiting Slavery in Northwest Territory 216 

Abolition of Slavery in New York 217 

do do in New Jersey 218 

Abolition of the Slave trade by Denmark 218 

do do by England 219 

do do by France 219 

\do do by Spain and Portugal 219 

Release of 7,000,000 Indian Slaves on the Continent of America 220 

Abolition of Slavery in Mexico 221 

Voluntary Emancipation of Slaves in Mexico 223 

Free Negro Labor in Mexico 224 

Negro Slavery cannot be extended over Mexico 226 

History of Indian Slavery in Mexico and the Spanish American countries generally. . . 227 

Las Casas' estimate of the Destruction of the Natives of America by the Spaniards 232 

The Romance and the reality of Mexico, as witnessed in President Juarez 233 

Mexican Peonage 234 

Abolition of Slavery in Yucatan 234 

do do in Guatemala and the Central American States : . • • 234 

do do in New Grenada 235 

do do in Venezuela 236 

do do in Peru 237 



J 



111 

PAGE 

Abolition of Slavery in Chili 238 

do do in La Plata 238 

Slavery in Brazil — its Decline 239 

Total Importation of Negro Slaves into Brazil 240 

Abolition of Slavery in Guiana 243 

Slavery in Canada 243 

Decline of Slavery in the West India Islands 247 

British West Indies — Abolition by England 247 

Article from the London Times 248 

English Motives of Abolition 252 

Jacobin Motives of Abolition in France, 1794 253 

Abolition of Slavery in the French West Indies and other French colonies by 

France 254 

Number of Slaves liberated by France 255 

Abolition in the Danish Islands by Denmark 255 

Abolition in the Swedish island of St. Bartholomew by Sweden 255 

Fall of Slavery in St. Domingo 256 

Spanish Islands — Cuba 256 

Porto Rico 257 

Decline of Commercial Slavery in the United States of North America 258 

Number of Slaves liberated by England 247 

Statistical Account of the gain of Free over Slave Territory 259 

Gain of Free over Slave Population 260 

Facts from the Helper Book 261 

Rise of Abolition — its hindrance to Emancipation 262 

Decline of Slavery in Maryland 262 

do do in Delaware 262 

do do in Virginia 262 

do do in Missouri 263 

Slavery in only one corner of Texas 263 

Reason of the creation of the Republican Party 263 

Venom Distilleries 264. 

Infidel Notions of the " Irrepressible Conflict " Leaders 264 

Livid Abolition triumphant 264 

Where is our Country ? 265 

General Rkcapitulation 265 

Grand Results 268 

Number of Slaves imported into America from 1500 to 1850 270 

Conclusion 271 

The Kansas Struggle 273 

Our Politics 274 

The Union dissolved on a False Assumption 276 

The dark Future 278 

No. Hope until Abolition is put down , 279 

Necessity for a White Republican Party „ 279 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, 

By EDWARD E. DUNBAR, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



177 



EDITORIAL NOTE. 

Our experience in the publication of the Mexican Papers 
has been eminently instructive. In Mexico, the numbers 
already issued have been translated into Spanish, and they 
appear to meet with much favor there. 

The following is an extract from a letter written by a pro- 
minent Mexican residing in Yera Cruz, to a gentleman in 
this city, relative to the publication : 

" Mr. Dunbar's writings on the affairs of Mexico are certainly the ablest that 
have appeared, and they are highly valued here. The Mexican Papers reveal 
some startling points even to our own people, and this is an example how an 
intelligent foreigner can sometimes tell a people important truths which they do 
not learn among themselves. 

" The representation Mr. Dunbar makes of existing erroneous public opinion 
abroad on Mexico, his vivid picture of the evil rule of the priesthood, and his 
clear and fixed convictions that Mexico never will be appreciated abroad or 
have peace and prosperity at home until the power of that priesthood is com- 
pletely destroyed, are all living truths which come home to us here, and which 
must be followed up and acted upon by the whole nation, with no thought of 
compromise or grounding arms until this end is gained." 

In this country we discover that the facts and sentiments 
contained in the Mexican Papers are entirely opposed to 
favorite theories, pre-conceived opinions, and deep-rooted 
prejudices respecting the great questions of which they treat. 
We also discover that the publication does not pander to the 
wild political delusion of the masses — a delusion that has 
caused 30,000,000 of people to stand up before the world, 
and in the height of their material and political prosperity, 
deliberately commit national suicide. 

But we have evidence that the Mexican Papers are excit- 
ing much thought, and we take great encouragement in the 
fact that a goodly number of "men of mind," into whose 
hands the publication has fallen, are enthusiastic in its sup- 
port ; and it is anything but discouraging to meet with con- 



178 

siderable ill will of a bilious cast, and of that peculiar bigoted 
and despotic character which, if it had the power, would 
crush out everything opposed to its own narrow views and 
sentiments. This has been evinced principally by those who, 
while opposed to freedom in Mexico, pretend to live in that 
fear, of slavery in this country which the " irrepressible con- 
flict " doctrine inculcates. 

We have been taken roundly to task by friends and 
acquaintances — some of whom, doubtless, have our good at 
heart — for espousing the cause of the Liberals of Mexico, 
whom they characterize as bands of murdering, plundering, 
half-civilized Indians ; and for running the Mexican question 
into American politics, by which we were led to come out in 
opposition to the republican view of the status of slavery, and 
to foreshadow trouble to the country in the event of the elec- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln as President. 

Now, we may be permitted to ask, How stands Mexico ? 
The factious church government in the capital has most 
ignominiously fallen; the liberal, constitutional government in 
glorious and orderly triumph occupies its place, and tran- 
quillity is beginning to prevail. How stands our country — 
that effulgent galaxy of sovereign States, which, but a few 
short months ago, shone so resplendent in the political firma- 
ment ? Lost ! Lost ! ! Torn from their high estate and 
hurled into eternal darkness by the Demon of Discord, The 
light of constitutional liberty fades in the land of Washington 
and dawns in the mystic realms of the Aztec. 

Having obtained, by personal observation and experience, 
what we believe to be a correct insight into the Mexican 
question, and its important bearing upon the politics of the 
United States, we could not remain quiet and see the deliber- 
ately fabricated statements and falsifications of truth, seized 
upon by our politicians, and used in such a way as to mangle' 
and torture the whole subject to the ruin of the country. 
Seeing clearly, as we conceived, the right and the wrong in 
this matter, and impressed to a painful degree that the wrong 
was being pursued, we gave vent to our statements in strong 



179 

and unequivocal language, and now, though the progress of 
events day by day convinces us that our position is correct, 
we stand awe-struck at the magnitude of the revolutionary 
drama now passing before us, and we feel more incompetent 
than ever to grapple with those questions of surpassing 
import to mankind, which are involved in the recent stupen- 
dous political developments in the northern portion of this 
continent. But we are constrained to continue to contribute 
our mite of information, in the sincere hope that it may be 
productive, in some degree, of public good. 

The following is an extract from a letter we received from 
a distinguished and highly respected source, dated Washing- 
ton, Jan. 20th, 1861 : 

" In Number 4, you do not speak of our Federal Constitution as a ' compact with 
hell/ but you say, ' our fundamental written law is, in one respect, against the 
operation of the common law of nations and of society, and under the pretence of 
remedying the great national evil that has grown out of that error in our 
written fundamental law, we do a still greater wrong in this more enlightened 
age by deliberately ignoring the operation of the common laws of nature and 
society, and force an unnatural result which brings dissolution^ disorder, and 
internecine wars, terminating at last in national ruin.' 

" These remarks have opened up a new train of thought in my mind, but I 
do not arrive at the clear comprehension of the matter which you, doubtless, 
entertain. Will you explain ? The general tenor of your pamphlets is tho- 
roughly condemnatory of the abolitionist proper, and you show no favor to 
either of the great political parties of the day. It is evident that you are 
strongly opposed to slavery, and yet you repudiate the Republican platform. 
You consider the Constitution defective, and yet you appear to be a strong 
Union man under its provisions. If it is not asking too much, I would like to 
know what party you sympathized with at the last Presidential election, and 
what line of policy you advocate in the great crisis now upon the country. 

" The great amount of new and valuable information you have given on 
Mexican matters, has excited my interest to know what you have in reserve 
relative to some of the corollary political points not fully explained, if it is not 
too foreign to the main subject." 

It is utterly impossible to do justice to the topics under 
discussion in the limited pages of this series of papers. 
Upon some points we have spoken fully and decidedly, 
while others, which our correspondent terms " corollary 



180 

political points," have been brought forward without explana- 
tion. We can also comprehend that those who read the 
Mexican Papers are puzzled to know where to place us 
politically, as political matters go in these days. Our 
position is isolated, we confess, but if there is any one source 
of comfort open to us in the midst of prevailing anxiety, 
doubt and depression, it is in the fact that we stand 
aloof from what we term the great political delusion of the 
day, and that we have no claim to the sympathy and support 
of the prevailing political forces which have destroyed the 
prestige, power, and glory of our common country. 

It has been our intention to enlarge somewhat on the 
most important political topics co-relatively brought up in 
the preceding papers, before the close of the series. To 
explain, therefore, to those who feel interested, as well as to 
answer such inquiries as those contained in the letter from 
"Washington, we propose to set forth what we term The 
Rise and Decline of Commercial Slavery in America. 
It has also been our intention to touch upon this subject, 
with reference to slavery in Mexico, before the close of the 
first series of the Mexican Papers. But owing to the 
exigencies that have recently risen, requiring all the infor- 
mation on the subject that can be brought forward, we are 
induced to devote more space to this object than was origi- 
nally intended. 

In view of the fact that the politics of the country now 
turn upon the question, Can slavery be carried into Mexico ? 
we consider the following remarks pertinent to this pub- 
lication. 



181 



THE RISE AND DECLINE OF COMMERCIAL SLA- 
VERY IN AMERICA. 

ORIGIN OF SLAVERY. 

In ancient days, the nations of the earth were accustomed 
to designate each other under the name and style of heathen. 
This practice has come down to us unimpaired in no very 
great degree. Christian nations classify the Chinese as 
pagans, while the Chinese apply the term, barbaric, to the 
surrounding world. The Christians call the Mohammedans 
barbarians, and the Mohammedans consider Christians no 
better than dogs. The Roman Catholics denounce the Pro- 
testants as heretics, who are something worse than heathen, 
and the Protestants charge the Roman Catholics with being 
heathen- worshippers of a bad Woman in Scarlet. The inha- 
bitants of the United States north, denounce the inhabitants 
of the United States south as barbarians, and the inhabitants 
of the United States south, charge back, that the inhabitants 
of the United States north are the mud-sills of society ; and 
not being able to agree about the matter, they break the 
Federal bonds, separate, and fight. Then, we have the 
Mormons, who act on the belief that they are the newest and 
choicest order of saints, culled from the heathenish world 
around. 

The prejudice and superstition of ancient days, and upon 
which all this peculiar difference of opinion among nations 
and peoples is founded, appear to hold good now. All the 
difference we can discover, is, some change in the modes and 
forms under which they are exhibited. 

We believe the idea of human slavery originated in that 
old sentiment — old as creation — " might makes right 7; — and 
which, is practically developed among men under those special 
and elaborate commands, promises, blessings and curses 
found in the sacred books of all the ancient nations. 

Under the Mosaic law, the Jews were made to understand 
that the lands of the heathen and the heathen round about. 



182 

should be given unto them as a possession — an inheritance 
forever. 

We find in Deuteronomy, chapter vi., verses 10 and 11 : 

" 10. And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into 
the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, 
to give thee great and goodly cities which thou buildest not, 

"11. And houses full of all good things which thou lillest not, and wells digged, 
which thou diggest not, vineyards and olive trees which thou plantest not; 
when thou shalt have eaten and be full." 

Again, chapter vii., verses 1 and 2 : 

"1. When the Lord thy God shall bring thee unto the land whither thou goest 
to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the 
Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the 
Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations- greater and mightier than thou : 

" 2. And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt 
smite them and utterly destroy them ; thou shalt make no covenant with them, 
nor shew mercy unto them." 

And in Leviticus, chapter xxv., verses 44, 45 and 46 : 

" 44. Both thy bondmen and bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of 
the heathen that are round about you : of them shall ye buy bondmen and 
bondmaids. 

" 45. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of 
them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in 
your land; and they shall be your possession. 

"46. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to 
inherit them for a possession ; they shall be your bondmen forever, but over 
your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over the other with 
rigor." 

We believe the foregoing verses, selected promiscuously, 
represent clearly and accurately one of the fundamental 
principles of the religious and civil code of the Jews, and, 
so far as we have been able to ascertain, the right to conquer 
and enslave the heathen, or, your enemies, as some have 
interpreted the passages of this nature, is proclaimed in the 
sacred writings of all the ancient nations ; and it is quite 
certain that from time immemorial, nations acting upon the 



183 

principle thus inculcated, have gone forth conquering and 
enslaving. 

Human slavery is sustained by some as an institution of 
Divine origin, and the Bible is brought forward in evidence. 
It is denounced by others as a sin and a crime, and the Bible 
is given as authority. The Christian Church in the United 
States is widely and bitterly divided on this question. But 
we have not thus brought forward the subject for the purpose 
of remarking upon it from a religious stand-point. We 
simply desire to state what we conceive to be the origin of 
those great moving principles which have led man to enslave 
his fellow man, from the earliest ages to the present day, 
without presuming to remark upon the right or wrong of 
those principles as they were originally enunciated. This 
is a field of discussion we would go a good ways round to 
avoid, rather than enter upon. 

Our personal views of human slavery were distinctly stated 
in the first number of the Mexican Papers. In coming to 
the conclusion that it is not right for man to own property in 
man, our natural sympathies were guided by that simple rule 
which has as much religion in it as our comprehension can 
master : " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do you even so to them.' 7 If, under this 
rule, involuntary servitude, or that system of human slavery 
which gives man property in man is right, then there is no 
God, no justice, no reality in anything. 

In entertaining this opinion on the principle of human sla- 
very, we trust that we shall be allowed to speak of the Fede- 
ral Constitution of the United States in reasonable and just 
terms, without being required to denounce it as a " compact 
with hell," or to stigmatize negro slavery in the South as the 
il sum of all villainies, 7 ' and our fellow- citizen slave-owners as 
" barbarians, thieves, cut-throats, the vilest of the vile, 77 etc., 
etc. Here is where we part company with the philanthropic 
fanatics and abolitionists of every grade, and in pursuing a 
course directly opposed to these delirious factions, we have 
never obtained any new light on the subject that has inclined 



184 

us to join the opposite extreme, and sustain the institution of 
slavery as of divine origin, wise, beneficent, and just. Here 
we part company with the Calhoun school. We particularly 
desire to call public attention to this point in the great poli- 
tical highway, where we diverge from the Garrison school and 
from the Calhoun school, for it is the point where, some 
thirty years ago, reason lost her sway, and the people of the 
United States started off on a course of education of a re- 
volutionary nature in its very inception, and which has, at 
last, borne its revolutionary fruit in the disruption of the con- 
federacy, and the ruin of the nation as a unity. Practically, 
the issue between the North and South which is now upon the 
country, has been forced onward to its present ruinous point, 
mainly under the auspices of abolitionism, and as yet, there 
is no evidence of the existence of an intermediate party, based 
on common- sense principles, which can make its voice heard 
amid the general uproar, in opposition the revolutionary 
masses who stand glaring fiercely at each other, and ready 
to deluge the land with blood. 

THE NEW ERA OF SLAVERY. 

It may be said that the discovery of the western coast of 
Africa, in the fifteenth century, by the Portuguese, created a 
new era in human slavery, inasmuch as the slavery resulting 
from Portuguese discoveries was confined to the African 
negro, and had its basis on commerce ; whereas, the ancient 
system of slavery, as practised by European and Asiatic 
nations, originated in national wars, which gave captives pro- 
miscuously among the nations, said captives being treated as 
property under the prevailing law. There are vague accounts 
of Norman discoveries in Africa as early as the first part of 
the fourteenth century, but until the middle of the fifteenth 
century, Africa, with the exception of a narrow strip of coun- 
try bordering on the Mediterranean, was, in fact, as much of 
a sealed book to Europe as the American continent. The 
year 1441 found Henry, JPrince of Portugal, devoting his 



185 

means and energies to voyages of discovery along the western 
coast of Africa. One of the first voyages made at this time, 
a short distance down the coast, under the command of An- 
tonio G0N9ALVEZ, resulted in the capture of some Azeneghi 
Moors. In 1442 these Moors told Prince Henry that if he 
would send them back to their country, they would return 
negro slaves as a ransom. The prince therefore ordered 
G0N9ALVEZ to take back three Moors and exchange them for 
as many negroes as he could get — the prince, as Barros states, 
insisting as the foundation of the matter, that if G0N9ALVEZ 
should not be able to obtain so many negroes (as had been 
mentioned) in exchange for the three Moors, yet that he 
should take them ; for, whatever number he should get, he 
would gain souls, because they (the negroes) might be converted 
to the faith, which could not be managed with the Moors. Gon- 
9ALVEZ returned with ten negroes, which, it would appear, 
were the first that had been seen in Portugal, as they ex- 
cited general wonder. 

The result of these voyages of G0N9ALVEZ was to start other 
and more formidable maritime expeditions down the African 
coast. In 1444, one of these expeditions fitted out at Lagos, 
attacked the islands of Nar and Tider, and captured two 
hundred black slaves, whom they carried back to Portugal 
and distributed, after allowing Prince Henry his royal fifth. 

The Chronicle of Azurara gives an account of the distribu- 
tion of these slaves, .and from that account we make the 
following extract : 

" While they were placing in one part the children that saw their parents in 
another, the children sprang up perseveringly and fled to them ; the mothers 
inclosed their children in their arms, and threw themselves with them on the 
ground, receiving wounds with little pity for their own flesh, so that their 
offspring might not be torn from them ! And so, with labor and difficulty, 
they concluded the partition, for, besides the trouble they had with the captives, 
the plain was full of people, as well of the place as of the villages and neigh- 
borhood around, who at that day gave rest to their hands, the mainstay of 
their livelihood, only to see this novelty. And as they looked upon these things, 
some deploring, some reasoning upon them, they made such a riotous noise as 
greatly to disturb those who had the management of the distribution. The 



186 

Infante was there, upon a powerful horse, accompanied by his people, looking 
out his share, but as a man who, for his part, did not care for gain ; for, of the 
forty-six souls which fell to his fifth, he speedily made his choice, as all his prin- 
cipal riches were in his contentment, considering with great delight the salvation of 
those souls which before were lost." 

Thus, favored by special blessings,, dispensations and indul- 
gences from the pope, and under the powerful patronage of 
Henry, Prince of Portugal, the African slave trade com- 
menced. The bodies of the heathen were allotted to their 
Christian captors, their souls to God, and thus the account 
with heaven was balanced. 

By slow degrees, the Portuguese prosecuted their discove- 
ries along the African coast until 1493, when the southern- 
most point (the Cape of Good Hope) was doubled by Bartho- 
lomew Diaz. Commercial enterprise kept pace with these 
discoveries, and the Portuguese vessels returned home with 
an assortment of African products, of which slaves, gold 
dust, ivory, skins, etc. formed the principal part. The slaves 
were disposed of principally to grandees and men of wealth 
in Portugal and Spain. Those countries were fully stocked 
with a laboring population, and the introduction of negro 
slave labor, to any great extent, would have been productive 
of distress and revolution. The demand for negro slaves from 
Africa was, therefore, limited, as they only served to vary 
and swell the train of attendants that belonged to the wealth, 
fashion, and grandeur of those days. It was reserved for the 
New World to give a new and extended impulse to the African 
slave trade. 

THE INTRODUCTION AND PROGRESS OF COMMERCIAL SLAVERY IN 

AMERICA. 

The discovery of the New World by Columbus, in 1492, 
cast into the shade the maritime enterprise of the Portu- 
guese, which had been prosecuted with great perseverance 
and daring on the western coast of Africa, during the previous 
half century. A new continent rose up before the world's 



187 

narrow vision, and nearly all the nations of Europe prepared 
to avail themselves of this new and grand field of aggrandize- 
ment. Spain, at this time, was the most advanced country 
on the continent of Europe. The Spaniards took the lead in 
the New World, and the first benefits of the discovery and 
the greater extent of territory fell to them. The West India 
islands were first explored and conquered, and, acting on the 
old idea of taking possession of the heathen as an inheritance, 
the natives with which these islands swarmed were at once 
seized upon as slaves and divided out among the colonizing 
Christians in encomiendas and repartimientos. The island of 
St. Domingo was discovered by Columbus on his first voyage, 
1492. The Licentiate Zuazo gives the number of natives at 
that time as 1,130,000. Others estimate it much higher. 
The enumeration by the Governor, Ovando, in 1508, repre- 
sents 70,000 Indians, and when Diego Columbus assumed the 
government of the island they were reduced to 40,000. In 
1514, Albuquerque, a new repartidor, appointed by Spain, 
arrived to make a repartition of the Indians, and found but 
13,000 remaining. 

Columbus, in his account of the discovery of the island of 
Hispaniola, thus speaks of the aborigines: "They are a 
loving, uncovetous people, so docile in all things, that I assure 
your highnesses I believe in all the world there is not a better 
people or a better country : they love their neighbors as 
themselves, and they have the sweetest and the gentlest way 
of talking in the world, and always with a smile.' 7 

As early as 1530, the principal West India islands, espe- 
cially St. Domingo and Cuba, were so nearly depopulated 
that Indian slaves were brought from the main land to supply 
in part the deficiency. The Pearl Coast, now known as 
Venezuela, was horribly ravaged by the Spaniards in order 
to obtain these slaves. This supply gave out in a few years. 
In 1537, only one hundred and thirty Indian slaves, native 
and imported, were found in the island of Cuba. In 1550, a 
letter from St. Domingo to the Emperor states : " There is 
scarcely a single natn e left on the island, and those Indians 



188 

who have been brought to the island as slaves, the greater 
part have fled into the depths of the country, as the com- 
panionship of the Spaniards is abhorrent to them.' 7 

Ferdinand, in his official dispatches to the West India 
Admiral, dated Seville, June 6, 1511, says : " The conversion 
of the Indians is the principal foundation of the conquest, that 
which principally ought to be attended to. 11 It may be said 
that the conversion of the Indians in the West India islands 
was thoroughly accomplished in about twenty-five years from 
the time they were discovered and occupied by the Spaniards, 
as, during this period, the knife, the bullet, bloodhounds 
and horrible oppression, the converting agencies of the 
Christians, had done their perfect work, and scarcely a vestige 
of the happy millions who, but a few years before had inha- 
bited these islands, remained. 

The same system of converting the heathen on the main 
land had already commenced, and the powerful effeets of the 
Christianity of the age were visible in the rapid extinction 
of the native races, which, in some localities, was complete. 
A widely extended country like Mexico, and other regions in 
South America escaped total depopulation. 

It cannot be said that the fearful amount of misery and 
death which now, after the lapse of more than three centuries, 
casts a lurid glare over the early course of the Spaniards in 
the New World, attracted no attention at the time, or met 
with no opposition. Certain humane and philanthropic indi- 
viduals belonging to several of the religious orders of the 
day, took a truly humane and noble stand in relation to the 
hideous acts of the conquerors to which they were eye-wit- 
nesses. Among these good men, Las Casas stands pre- 
eminent for his purity of purpose, his self-sacrificing spirit, 
zeal, courage and ability. Some twelve Dominican monks 
residing in Hispaniola were, as a body, thoroughly opposed 
to the cruelties practised upon the Indians by the Spaniards ; 
and one of these monks, Father Antonio Montosino, became 
conspicuous for his bold and active measures tending to a 
more humane policy. But the grand result proved that all 



189 

the efforts of these good men — extraordinary in their day — 
availed nothing. Their strength failed, their limbs withered, 
and their voices were hushed in death as one by one they 
disappeared, leaving the evil tide of human affairs to roll over 
the New World with overwhelming volume and power. 

With the early destruction of the aborigines in the West 
India islands and some of the countries on the American con- 
tinent, originally overrun by the Spaniards, an imperative de- 
mand for laborers arose, and thus the way for the importation 
of negro slaves from Africa was opened. 

In 1501, by royal permission, a few negro slaves were im- 
ported into Hispaniola. One of the conditions of this impor- 
tation was, that the negro slaves should be of those born 
among Christians in Spain, that they might aid in converting 
the heathen in the New World. But as these negroes did not 
prove enduring specimens of muscular Christianity, resort 
was had to the pure heathen article in Africa, and a small 
invoice of these was imported into St. Domingo, in 1503. 
The king, in a letter to Ovando, the Governor of St. Do- 
mingo, dated Segovia, Sept. 1505, says : "I will send more 
negro slaves as you request ; I think there may be a hun- 
dred." Some of these negro slaves ran away among the 
natives and caused much mischief. As the natives diminished 
the demand for negro slaves increased, and the importations 
became greater. The royal historiographer, Herrera, states 
that the king informed the Admiral Don Diego Columbus, in 
1510, that he had ordered the officials at Seville to dispatch 
fifty negroes to work the mines in Hispaniola. The follow- 
ing sentence occurs in a letter of the king, elated June, 1511, 
to an officer in the colony named Sampier. " I do not un- 
derstand how so many negroes have died. 77 The 24th of 
October, 1511, the king gave the following order to the offi- 
cials of Seville : " Pay to Pedro de Ledesma, our pilot, that 
which is due to him for the last voyage made at our com- 
mand, to transport negroes to Hispaniola." 

It appears that the exportation of negro slaves to the West 
India islands was at first under the immediate supervision of 



190 

the crown, and the business was somewhat limited up to 
1517, when Charles Y. granted to the governor, Be Bresa, 
a Fleming, the monopoly of importing 4,000 negroes into 
the West India islands within the period of eight years. 
Las Casas has been charged by his enemies with being the 
first cause of the importation of negro slaves into the Spanish 
colonies. This is manifestly unjust. It is true, however, 
that in 1517, Las Casas, in his zeal to alleviate the suffer- 
ings of the Indians, and save them from total annihilation 
under the horrid atrocities of the Spaniards, to which he was 
an eye-witness, advised the importation of negro slaves. Las 
Casas speedily repented of his error, and in writing his own 
history subsequently, he says : 

" This advice, that license should be given to bring negro slaves to these 
lands, the Clerigo Casas first gave, not considering the injustice with which the 
Portuguese take them, and make them slaves ; which advice, after he had ap- 
prehended the nature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in 
the world. For he always held that they had been made slaves unjustly and 
tyrannically ; for the same reason holds good of them as of the Indians." 

In 1523, another monopoly grant was given to De Bresa, 
before the first had expired, and the last permitted the im- 
portation of 4,000 negro slaves into the Indies in eight 
years. 

De Bresa sold these grants to a company of Genoese mer- 
chants, and negroes were sold at a very high price, Figueroa, 
writing to the Emperor from St. Domingo, July, 1520, 
says : 

" Negroes are very much in request ; none have come for about a year. It 
would have been better to have given De Bresa the customs' duties (i. e. the 
duties that had usually been paid on the importation of slaves), than to have 
placed a prohibition." 

Owing to the continued remonstrances of the colonists by 
reason of the scarcity of slaves, the monopoly granted to De 
Bresa was recalled in 1524, and instead of it, permission was 
granted for the importation of 1,500 negroes to Hispaniola ; 
300 to Cuba ; 500 to Porto Rico ; 300 to Jamaica ; and 500 



191 

to Castilla del Oro, on the main land. De Bresa was com- 
pensated by having assigned to him the customs duties on 
the 1,500 negroes imported into Hispaniola. 

In 1527, 1,000 negroes were allowed to be imported into 
Cuba, v In 1528, the king granted to Enrique Ciguer and 
Geronimo Sailler, Germans, the monopoly of importing 
4,000 negro slaves into the Indias, within a certain time. In 
1531, the Bishop of St. Domingo writes to the empress that 
the perpetuity of that island, of Porto Rico and of Cuba con- 
sists in the negroes, and he requests that they should be im- 
ported without license. 

In 1536, the monopoly to import 4,000 negro slaves into the 
Indies within the term of four years, was granted for 26,000 
ducats. In 1542, one of the king's chaplains who had traversed 
the island of Hispaniola, informed the Council of the Indies 
that according to his belief there were 25,000 to 30,000 
negroes on the island, and the number of the masters was 
1,200. We find it stated in the Munoz collection that in 
1552, license was granted to import 23,000 negro slaves into 
the Indies within the term of seven years at eight ducats per 
head. The number of negroes annually imported into His- 
paniola alone, at this period, was 2,000. 

The granting of licenses to import negroes into the Indies 
and the customs duties arising from the importation, consti- 
tuted the source of an enormous revenue to the crown of 
Spain. A portion of the money accruing from this source 
was employed in building the fortress-palaces of Madrid and 
Toledo. Helps, in his truly valuable work, " The Spanish 
Conquest of America" says on this point ; 

11 Many of the noted buildings of the earth are of most questionable origin ; 
but these two palaces must be allowed to enjoy a remarkable preeminence as 
monuments of folly and oppression. Other buildings have been erected solely 
at the cost of the suffering subjects of great despots, or by prisoners captured 
in war ; but the blood-cemented walls of the Alcazar of Madrid might boast of 
being raised upon a complication of suffering hitherto unparalleled in the annals 
of mankind." 

The South American continent was discovered in the year 



192 

1500 by Yincent Yanez Pinzon, a companion of Columbus. 
and in a very few years, slave-hunting and slavery nearly 
desolated all that region of country lying on the Caribbean 
Sea, then known as the Pearl Coast. The conquest of Mexico 
was achieved by Cortez in 1521. The conquest of Peru was 
commenced by Pizzaro in 1524, and completed in 1527. 
The coast of Brazil had been discovered and its unexplored 
territory divided into captaincies by the King of Portugal in 
1530. 

Lerdo de Tejada, in his full and reliable " Apuntos Histo- 
ricos de Vera Cruz" says : 

"In 1535, sixteen years after the conquest, the greater portion of the inha- 
bitants living on the Vera Cruz shore was composed of the Indians who were 
there before the conquest, and negro slaves brought from Africa by the 
Spaniards, as into the other colonies, to perform the severe labor of the field. 
From the union of these two races, the Indian and the negro, came the mestizos, 
known as jarochos, which to this day form a part of the inhabitants of Vera 
Cruz and the neighborhood." 

It is evident, therefore, that under the license to import 
negro slaves into the Spanish colonies, this barbarous traffic 
was commenced in Mexico immediately after the conquest of 
the country by Cortez. 

That vast region known as Brazil fell to the Portuguese. 
The French, Dutch, Spanish and English made occasional 
inroads upon this territory, and at times held possession of 
parts and the whole of the same ; but the Portuguese always 
regained the country, and it remained a dependency of Por 
tugal until 1822. At the outset, the Portuguese equalled, if 
they did not excel the Spaniards in their cruel treatment of 
the natives, who were at once enslaved on plantations. Negroes 
were preferred, however, as they proved more capable and 
enduring. On the discovery of the mines in the interior, the 
latter part of the seventeenth century, the general destruction 
of the natives commenced. The Portuguese ransacked the 
country from end to end to capture Indians and keep up the 
supply of slaves in the mines. The depopulation of Brazil 
then went on at a fearful rate, and in a few years the natives 



193 

ceased to form an element of any great value in the labor of 
the country. Something more than 2,000,000 of the Brazil 
Indians must have been enslaved and destroyed by the Por- 
tuguese and other European nations, before the middle of 
the eighteenth century. Here then, we have a vast region 
ready to swallow up innumerable cargoes of heathen from 
Africa. Circumstances favored the importation , of negro 
slaves into Brazil. The Portuguese were in possession of the 
western coast of Africa, and. their arrangements for the com-, 
mercial slave trade were complete. Bahia, one of the prin- 
cipal Brazilian ports, was a convenient and favorite resort for 
slave traders, by reason of its nearness to the African coast, 
and the importation of negro slaves into Brazil was co-existent 
with the discovery and occupation of the country by the 
Portuguese. 

Paraguay and Buenos Ayres were discovered by the 
Spaniards in 1516, and while the Portuguese were occupying 
Brazil, the Spaniards were gradually working their way into 
those countries to the south and west, now known as the 
Argentine Confederation. 

It may be said that by the year 1550, the general outline 
of those extended regions on this continent known as 
Spanish America, and the Portuguese possessions in Brazil 
were defined. The aborigines of the West India islands had 
been totally destroyed and their places filled by negro 
slaves imported from. Africa. Immense numbers of the 
Mexican people were disappearing under the iron rule of the 
Spaniard. South America, divided between the Spaniards 
and Portuguese, with an occasional inroad by some other 
European nation, had been entirely depopulated in certain 
sections, and the work of human sacrifice was rapidly pro- 
gressing throughout the entire length and breadth of the land. 
In proportion as the natives disappeared, the demand for 
negro slaves increased, and we thus find that in the middle 
of the sixteenth century the great commercial slave trade on 
this continent and the West Indies, with the exception of that 
portion of North America not then settled, was fully estab- 



194 

lished. With the West India islands the trade was very brisk, 
as they depended entirely on this source for labor. With 
Mexico, the trade was active only with certain limited sec- 
tions. With Brazil it was just commencing on a grand scale, 
and with other portions of South America the traffic was 
gradually finding its way to every part. 

This immense trade in human flesh — immense in amount, 
and immense in the profit it yielded — was at first monopo- 
lized by the Spaniards and Portuguese. By sure and not 
very slow degrees, other European nations encroached upon 
this monopoly, primarily through companies of their respec- 
tive citizens, carrying on a contraband trade, and finally, 
whatever of monopoly remained was transferred from one 
nation to another by grants protected by treaty. 

The Dutch smuggled considerable numbers of negro slaves 
into the West India islands and Brazil before the close of the 
sixteenth century. 

One John Hawkins was the first Englishman who entered 
upon the African slave trade. In the year 1562, Hawkins 
went to the coast of Africa with three vessels, the Solomon, 
of 120 tons, the Swallow of 100 tons, and the Jonas, of 40 
tons. These vessels obtained 300 negroes on the coast of 
Africa, partly by capture, and partly by purchase, and took 
them to Hispaniola, where they were sold to good advantage, 
and Hawkins returned to England. Another successful ex- 
pedition was made and the English considered the African 
slave trade fairly open to them. Queen Elizabeth knighted 
Hawkins, and made him treasurer of the navy. The queen 
also chartered a company to carry on the trade. Thus Protes- 
tant Elizabeth vied with Catholic Europe in favoring the 
African slave trade, by which the descendants of Ham should be 
snatched from heathenism, as brands plucked from the burn- 
ing, and transported to lands where the light of Christianity 
would penetrate their benighted souls. 

In 1618, King James I. granted a slave trading charter to 
Sir Robert Eich. 

The first English colony was planted in Virginia 1607, and 



195 

the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth 1621. In August, 1619, a 
Dutch man-of-war visited Jamestown, Virginia, having on 
board negro slaves, of which they sold nineteen to the settlers. 
These were the first negro slaves imported into the English 
colonies. In 1670, according to Gov. Berkley's statistics, 
there were 2,000 negro slaves in the Virginia colony. Be- 
tween the years 1630 and 1640, when there was no Parlia- 
ment in England, the Dutch carried on a lucrative commerce 
with the English- American plantations, and it is quite pro- 
bable that the importation of negro slaves formed one branch 
of this profitable commerce. The Puritans commenced the 
African slave trade in 1646. Their first slave trader was 
fitted out and sailed for the coast of Africa, from Boston, 
in that year. 

The island of Nevis, held by the English, contained, in 
1628, 8,000 negro slaves, employed in the culture of sugar. 

The island of St. Christopher in the Caribbean Sea had been 
settled by the English and French in 1624, and in 1635 it 
was well supplied with negro slaves. 

The island of Montserrat was settled by the English under 
Sir Thomas Warren, Governor of St. Christopher, in 1632, 
and in 1658 it contained 10,000 negro slaves. 

The French from the island of St. Christopher settled the 
island of Martinique in 1635, and in 1658 it contained 10,000 
negro slaves. Guadaloupe was settled and stocked with 
negroes by the French the same year. 

Slavery was established in all the French colonies in 
America by royal edicts during the reign of Louis XIII. 

The Dutch took possession of the small island of St. 
Eustatia in the Caribbean Sea 1632. and it was chiefly used 
by them for its commodious position, from which a contra- 
band trade could be carried on with the neighboring Euro- 
pean colonies. 15,000 negro slaves were on this island in 
1658. 

In 1637, some of the Dutch West India companies' ships 
captured the Guinea coast castle of St. George del Mlna, the 
principal fort of the Portuguese on the African coast, and 



196 

were thus supplied first hand with negroes for carrying 
on their sugar plantations, which they then held in Brazil, 
and supplying the trade with slaves. 

In 1657, the Dutch occupied the small and barren West 
India island of Curacoa for the sole purpose of doing a con- 
traband business in negro slaves and European merchandise, 
with the Spanish colonies. 

In 1662, Charles II. granted a monopoly, authorizing a 
company to export 3,000 negro slaves per annum to his 
American colonies. This was a most valuable privilege, and 
it came out under the immediate auspices of the Queen 
Dowager and the Duke of York. 

This monopoly became odious, and in 1695 it was resolved 
by the Commons of England in Committee of the Whol^, 
"that for the better supply of the plantations, all the sub- 
jects of Great Britain should have liberty to trade in Africa 
for negroes, with such limits as should be prescribed by Par- 
liament." 

Some Frenchmen had for many years — since 1635 it is 
said — maintained an establishment on the Senegal River in 
Africa, under the name of the " Senegal Company," and in 
1685, says Macpherson, in his " Annals of Commerce," the 
king of France, observing that the great extent of the limits 
of the Senegal Company (no less than about 1,500 leagues of 
the coast of Africa) excluded all his other subjects from 
trading in negro slaves, for the u§e of the West India colonies, 
now established a New Guinea company with exclusive right 
for twenty years to trade in negroes, gold dust, etc., between 
the river Sierra Leone and the Cape of Good Hope ; the 
balance of the coast being reserved to the Senegal Company. 

In 1696, the Portuguese, haying emerged from the rule of 
Spain, contracted to furnish the Spanish colonies with 25,000 
negro slaves in five years. This was the foundation of the 
famous asiento contract which figures so largely in English 
history. The contract was fulfilled by the Portuguese, the 
king taking part in it and advancing two-thirds of the funds 
necessary to carry it out. Just as this contract with the 



197 

Portuguese expired, 1701, the French gave a king, Philip 
V., to Spain, who transferred the slave trade monopoly to his 
countrymen, this being considered the greatest favor he could 
legally grant to them. 

The asiento contract papers passed into the hands of the 
English by the treaty of Utrecht, 1713, and subsequently, in 
May of that year, Great Britain obtained from Spain an 
entirely new contract, by which the South Sea company 
engaged to deliver to the Spanish colonies, 4,800 negro 
slaves yearly for thirty years. This occasioned great rejoic- 
ing in England, so valuable was the contract considered. The 
English were not limited to the number stipulated per annum, 
except during the five last years of the contract. For twenty- 
five years they imported all they could sell. They agreed to 
pay £7 10s. for each of the first 4,000 negroes ; the other 
eight hundred were freed from this tribute in consideration 
of £45,000 advanced to the court of Madrid, to be reimbursed 
in the course of ten years. This tribute was reduced to half 
for all the slaves that were not required by the contract. 
Philip V. indemnified himself for this sacrifice by reserving 
the fourth part of the profits made by the company. 

Infringements on this contract and restrictions by Spain, 
formed at one time, one of the principal causes of war with 
Spain. The peace of 1748 restored to England all their rights 
in the asiento contract, but the Company was induced to give 
up the short period that remained of the contract for an 
indemnity. Robert Mayne, a London merchant, succeeded 
to the association under a Spanish name, but not meeting 
with great success, the resolution was taken in 1752 to receive 
negro slaves on the island of Porto Rico, a duty of £9 to be 
paid to government on each slave. In 1773 Spain renewed 
the charter with a company of Spanish, French and Genoese 
merchants, doing business in Cadiz. The tax was diminished 
and other advantages granted by which the slave trade 
acquired fresh activity and became more extended. 

It is mentioned in the writings of Padre Alegre that the 
black vomit, or yellow fever, from which Vera Cruz, in Mexico, 



198 

suffers so much, was first brought to that place by an English 
ship loaded with negroes, in 1699. 

In 1698, the English contraband slave traders had virtually 
broken up the Royal African Company monopoly in Guinea and 
other parts of the African coast, and this year the English Par- 
liament passed an act relieving the Royal African Company 
from the expense of sustaining the forts, castles, etc., necessary 
to protect the slave trade, by imposing a duty of ten per cent, 
on all merchandise imported into Africa, and ten per cent, on 
all merchandise exported from Africa, negroes excepted. This 
trade, which had been virtually open, was now made legally so. 

In 1708 the English House of Commons resolved, "That 
the slave trade was important, and ought to be open to all 
the queen's subjects trading from Great Britain f and the act 
of 23d George II. declares : 

" The slave trade to be very advantageous to Great Britain, and necessary 
for supplying the plantations and colonies thereunto belonging, with a sufficient 
number of negroes at a reasonable rate." 

In 1730, the English parliament granted £10,000 per 
annum, till 1746, to sustain the forts, factories, etc., on the 
coast of Africa, that the slave trade might be protected and 
carried on successfully. 

At this time the English supplied their North American 
colonies, from Massachusetts Bay to Florida, with negro 
slaves. They held the monopoly of supplying the Spanish 
colonies with the same article. They maintained slave fac- 
tories at Vera Cruz, Panama, Porto Bello, Carthagena, 
Buenos Ayres, and subsequently in Brazil, and in contract 
with Portugal to furnish that dependency with negro slaves. 

When some of the American colonies protested to the 
mother country against the importation of negro slaves within 
their limits, the English government, as late as 1775, just as 
the American Revolution commenced, thus replied to these 
protests : 

1 ' We cannot allow the Colonies to check or discourage in any degree a traffic so 
beneficial to the nation." 



199 



Bryan Edwards, the best English authority we can quote 
on the subject, says : 

" The British slave trade had attained its highest pitch of prosperity a short 
time before the commencement of the American War." 

In 1771, the English exported from Africa in 192 ships, 
47,146 negro slaves. This is the official account. 

In 1787, the merchants of Liverpool transmitted to the 
Lords of the Privy Council, the following account of the 
number of slaves exported from Africa that year by the dif- 
ferent European nations. 



British, . 
French, . 
Dutch, 
Danes, 
Portuguese, 



38,000 

20,000 

4,000 

2,000 

10,000 



14,000 

It is a well-known fact that the contraband trade in negro 
slaves averaged more than the legalized trade. 

The whole number of factories and forts established on the 
coast of Africa at this time was 40, of which 14 belonged to 
the English, 3 to the French, 15 to the Dutch, 4 to the Por- 
tuguese, and 4 to the Danes. 



CULMINATING PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL SLAVERY 

IN AMERICA. 

Commencing with a few remarks upon the origin of slavery, 
we have given a line of facts in something like chronological 
order, exhibiting the degrees of advancement made by Chris- 
tian nations in commercial slavery on the Western Continent 
and Islands up to the year 1787. The line of facts given 
might be greatly enlarged and perfected, but we think suffi- 
cient has been stated to prove what we proposed to prove in 
the first place, namely, that the new era of commercial sla- 
very reached its culminating period throughout the American 
continent and the West Indian islands, the latter part of the 
eighteenth century. 



200 

At this period, we find the continent and islands occupied 
by the following nationalities : 

England held possession of the northern portion of North 
America, with the geographical division of Canada; a portion 
of Guiana, and the West India islands of Jamaica, Barbadoes, 
Bermudas, Bahamas, Grenada, St. Yincent, Dominica, Anti- 
gua, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Christopher, and most of the 
Virgin Isles. 

The thirteen United States occupied the central portion of 
North America. 

The extensive American possessions of Spain were divided 
into four vice-royalties, namely, Mexico, Peru, La Plata and 
New Granada ; and five captain-generalships, namely, 
Yucatan, Guatemala, Chili, Venezuela, and the islands of 
Cuba and Porto Rico. 

Th^e Portuguese occupied Brazil. 

The French held possession of a portion of Guiana on the 
main land, and the West India islands of St. Domingo, Mar- 
tinique, Guadaloupe, St. Lucia, Tobago, and Cayenne. 

The Danes owned the islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix, 
of the group of Virgin Isles. 

The number of negro slaves in North America and the 
West India islands, at the period at which we are writing, 
can be given with accuracy, but with Mexico, Central and 
South America, it is otherwise, as there are absolutely no very 
reliable statistics in existence relative to this point. We have 
made a careful examination, however, of all the information 
to be obtained on the subject, and we give the result, believ- 
ing it to be an approximation to the truth — rather under 
than over the actuality. 

It must be borne in mind that when Spain ruled the 
Spanish American countries on this continent, the aborigines 
of those countries were held as slaves* Though the Spaniards 
made terrible havoc with the natives, enough appear to have 
survived to meet the necessary requirements of labor in 

* See Mexico, page 227. 



201 

Mexico, Central and South America, so that negro slavery, 
except in several limited districts, never prevailed to any 
great extent in those continental possessions of the Spaniards. 
The following is our estimate of slaves on this continent 
and in the West India islands in 1790 : 







Negro Slaves. 


Indian Slaves. 


Total 


United States, 


. 


. 697,891 






British West Indies, 


. 


. 505,241 






French West Indies, 


. 


. 800,000 






Guiana, 


. 


.. 50,000 






Spanish possessions on 


the 


con- 






tinent, 


. 


. 410,000 


1,000,000 




Brazil (Portuguese) 


• 


. 600,000 








3,003,138 


7,000,000 


10,063,138 



The supply of negro slaves in those days was kept up by 
direct importation, and not from the natural increase of the 
negroes on the soil. The importation of negro slaves at this 
period consisted principally of male adults, less than one- 
third being women, and very few small children. The great 
mass of the negro slave population was, therefore, an adult 
laboring population, and with the usual proportion of women 
and children, they would have made an exhibit of more than 
6,000,000. 

The average value of a negro slave at this time may be 
stated at $300. The regular rate for good plantation hands 
was £70. 

The use of slave labor was careless and extravagant in the 
extreme, except in certain localities on the continent. The 
consumption of negro slaves, especially in the West Indies 
and Brazil, was enormous, and yet the result in products was 
comparatively small. 

The' importation of negro slaves into America during the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, must have averaged 
something more than 100,000 per annum, and throughout 
the entire century, it could not have been less than 75,000 
per annum. 



202 

At the commencement of the American Revolution, this 
continent, every foot of it from the frozen North to 
Magellan, was slave territory. The West India islands were 
all devoted to slavery. By royal edicts, legislative enact- 
ments, and common law, the right of man to own property 
in man was acknowledged and protected in the strongest 
manner possible. All the nations having possessions in the 
Western Hemisphere, were actively engaged in supplying 
those possessions with slaves. The negro slaves alone, 
nearly equalled the pure whites throughout the conti- 
nent and the islands, and taking into account the Indian 
slaves in Mexico and South America, the bond outnumbered 
the free, in all America (excepting the wild Indians), two 
to one ! 

The entire labor or service of the continent and the islands, 
if we make a slight exception in Canada and the New Eng- 
land colonies, was performed by slaves, and all the exports 
were the products of slave labor. The institution of slavery 
was, therefore, not only national, but continental. The 
moral, legal, territorial, industrial, and commercial status of 
the institution was complete. 

In this, the darkest day of modern slavery, the American 
Declaration of Independence flashed upon the world. This 
Declaration declared the following : 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident ; THAT all 
men are created equal ; and that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that 
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
NESS." 

A line of poetry in a world of prose — a ray of light pene- 
trating universal darkness — the leaven of humanity, justice, 
and freedom in the mass of cruelty, iniquity, and despotism 
— an anchor of hope — a sign of the millennium, but a' positive 
impossibility, as a whole, intellectually and socially, if not 
politically, so long as men are created as they are. 

This is the light in which we view the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. It was a superb document on which to base a 



203 

revolution and achieve independence. But eleven years 
afterward, when it became necessary for the fathers to frame 
a constitution adapted to the reality of things as they then 
existed, material interests, imperious matter of fact expe- 
diency, required that ail the poetry and romance, all the fine 
ideas about equality in man and his inalienable rights, con- 
tained in the Declaration upon which the independence of 
the country had been achieved, should be repudiated. Con- 
sequently, a Constitution that recognized the right of man 
to own property in man, and protected him in that right, so 
far as human law can protect him, was framed and adopted. 
Revolting as it is to acknowledge this feature in our Consti- 
tution at the present day, it must be done. A certain race 
of human beings have been bought and sold, and held to 
involuntary labor or service under this Constitution, from the 
day it was framed to the present. The monstrous incon- 
sistency between the Declaration of Independence and a Con- 
stitution that recognized the right of man to hold property 
in man, as well as the anomaly of basing a free republican 
government on the freedom of one race and the slavery of 
another, staggered the fathers, and well-nigh proved an 
insurmountable obstacle to the realization of their patriotic 
hopes at the very outset. We have one evidence of 
this in the care with which the words slave and slavery were 
excluded from the Constitution. 

Article I. of the Constitution, section second, third clause, 
says : 

" Representative and direct taxes shall be proportioned among the several 
States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective 
numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free 
persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding 
Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons." 

We believe this gives one representative in the United 
States Congress to every 50,000 slaves ;, slavery is, therefore, 
a political element in our government. 

Also, in Article I., section ninth, first clause, we find : 



204 

" The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now ex- 
isting shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by Congress prior 
to the year 1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not 
exceeding ten dollars for each person." 

The foreign and domestic slave trade is here made consti- 
tutional, irrevocably so until 1803, and as long after as Con- 
gress might allow. The Constitution does not say the migra- 
tion or importation of such persons as any of the States shall 
think proper to admit, shall be prohibited by Congress prior 
to the year 1808, etc., but it says, " shall not be prohibited" 
etc. Under this provision the foreign importation of negro 
slaves from Africa was abolished in 1808, bij special act of 
Congress, but domestic migration of negro slaves, made con- 
stitutional in the same clause, is suffered to continue to this 
clay. The negro slaves imported under the above clause, 
passed through the custom-house and paid a duty of ten 
dollars per head, the same as merchandise, and under the 
Constitution, this business can be resumed any day Congress 
may permit. 

Article IV., section second, third clause says : 

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, es- 
caping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labor may be due." 

Thus the property in the slave was secured to the owner, 
and the right of the owner to his property was made perfect. 
This is in direct conflict with the law of the Jews on that sub- 
ject, as we find in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter xxiii., 
verses 15 and 16 : 

"15. Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which has escaped 
from his master unto thee : 

"16. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall 
choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress 
him." 

It is said that this law referred to slaves who escaped to 
the Jews from foreign countries; but if we fall back upon the 



205 

superstitious notions of the Jews relative to slavery, we meet 
with contradictions, and are obliged to follow a zig-zag 
course of argument which fortify us in no very decided manner, 
either for or against the institution. 

The clauses we have quoted from the Constitution are all 
that refer directly to the subject of slavery. There is not one 
word in that instrument which points to the ultimate aboli- 
tion of the institution, or places any limit to its extension. 
On the contrary, it perpetuates the institution and gives 
opportunity for its extension so long as it remains the Consti- 
tution of the country. On this point, and to ascertain how 
the fathers regarded the status of slavery and the negro, let 
us look at the practice of the fathers themselves. 

The following is the language used in those days in certain 
treaties, instruments second in importance only to the Con- 
stitution : 



"PROVISIONAL ARTICLES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND HIS 

BRITANNIC MAJESTY, 

" Agreed upon by and between Richard Oswald,. Esquire the Commissioner 
of His Britannic Majesty, for treating of Peace with the Commissioners of the 
United States of America, in behalf of his said Majesty, on one part, and John 
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and Henry Laurens, four of the Commis- 
sioners of the said States, etc., etc., etc. 

"Article VII. * * * All prisoners on both sides shall be set at liberty, and 
His Britannic Majesty shall, with all convenient speed, and without causing any 
destruction, or carrying away any 'negroes or other property 1 of the American 
inhabitants, withdraw all his armies, garrisons and fleets from the said U. S., 
and from every port, place and harbor within the same. * * * 
" Done at Paris, Nov. 30, 1?82. 

" Richard Oswald, [l.s.] 
" John Adams, [l.s.] 

" B. Franklin, [l.s.] 

" John Jay, [l.s.] 

" Henry Laurens, [l.s.]' 7 

" definite treaty of peace, between the united states of america and his 

britannic majesty. 

" Article VII. * * * And His Britannic Majesty shall, with all convenient 
speed, and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any ' negroes or 



206 

other property " of the American inhabitants, withdraw all his armies,, etc., etc., 
etc # *********** 

" Done at Paris, Sept. 3, 1783. 



" D. Hartley, 


[L.S.] 


" John Adams, 


[L.S.] 


" B. Franklin, 


[L.S.] 


" John Jay, 


[L.S.]" 



" TREATY OF PEACE AND AMITY, BETWEEN HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY AND THE UNITED 

STATES OF AMERICA, 

" [Ratified and confirmed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
Feb. 11, 1815.] 

" Article I. * * * Shall be restored without delay, and without causing any 
destruction, or carrying away any of the artillery or other public property 
originally captured in the said forts or places, and which shall remain therein 
upon the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, or any ' slaves or ot/ier 
private property? ********* 

" Done, in triplicate, at Ghent, Dec. 24, 1814. 

" Gambier, [l.s.] 

" Henry Goulburn, [l.s.] 
" William Adams, [l.s.] 

" John Quincy Adams, [l.s.] 
" J. A. Bayard, [l.s.] 

" H. Clay, [l.s.] 

"Jona. Russell, [l.s.] 

11 Albert Gallatin. [l.s.]" 

In 1803, during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, that 
extensive region, then known as the Louisiana Territory, was 
purchased from France. Mr. Jefferson, we believe, con- 
sidered this purchase a violation of the Constitution, but at 
the same time, he considered the political necessity for the 
transaction sufficient to override the Constitution. This is 
one of the instances that demonstrates how utterly worthless 
written national compacts are when expediency requires that 
they should be set aside. In this instance, it was either a 
purchase or a foreign war. By this purchase, an immense 
tract of slave territory was added to the Union. Louisiana 
came in as a slave State in 1812, under the administration of 
Mr. Madison, and two more slave States from this territory, 
Arkansas and Missouri, were admitted subsequently. 

The next purchase of territory was that of Florida, one of 



207 

the Spanish possessions. General Jackson invaded this ter- 
ritory by order of the Government, to chastise the Indians 
who were committing depredations on our southern border ; 
and in 1821, Spain having no other alternative, sold the 
territory to the United States, and it immediately came into 
the Union as slave territory under the administration of Mr. 
Monroe. 

The Constitution protecting slavery and imposing no limit 
to its extension or duration, treaties that required foreign 
nations to give up captive negroes as property, and purchases 
of slave territory were the acts of the fathers. Every foot of 
slave territory added to this Union since the adoption of the 
Constitution, except Texas, was brought in by the fathers 
themselves. When, therefore, Eepublican politicians or stump 
demagogues in the North, who may be puzzled to define their 
position, declare : "We are for the Constitution, the Union and 
the laws ! We stand upon the Constitution as it is — as it was 
understood and interpreted by Washington, Jefferson, 
Madison, Monroe, and other of the fathers !" it appears to us 
that they declare for as strong a pro-slavery Constitution as 
ever was framed on earth, for a Union based on slavery, and 
for laws that protect and perpetuate the institution ; and 
that they go back to days when the right of man to hold pro- 
perty in man was more universally conceded than it is now, 
and when the understanding and practice of the fathers was 
to permit the extension of slavery under the Constitution. 
Much as our desires and feelings incline us to view this mat- 
ter in a different light, our judgment forces us to this conclu- 
sion — the conclusion to which the South has been educated 
under the Constitution and the acts of the fathers, most of 
whom lived and died slave-owners. Under these circum- 
stances, it can scarcely be said that the slave States have 
claimed more than they have a constitutional right to demand. 

" Distance lends enchantment to the view, ;; mentally as 
well as optically. It is doubtless a good custom to cast a 
halo of glory around the great and good of earth who have 
passed away — to remember their better part and bur}^ their 



208 

errors in oblivion. But it is not always safe to regard the 
great dead, who yet have a direct influence on our destiny, as 
infallible. 

It is almost inexplicable how the men of '76, those who 
brought forth the Declaration of Independence, carried 
through the revolution successfully, and consolidated the 
federal Union, could have based and carried out a democratic 
republican form of government on the political freedom and 
equality of the whites, and the legal slavery of the blacks. 
This sudden descent from the transcendental in liberty and 
equality, down, clown into the dark shades of human bondage, 
is scarcely credible in the present day. The South, in the- 
ory and practice, claims this to be the fact, but denies that 
there is any inconsistency in it. The South is undoubtedly 
right as regards the fact, but wrong in claiming that there is 
no inconsistency. The North, in theory, denies the fact, and 
of course the inconsistency, but in practice, the great conso- 
lidated Republican party of the North has drifted into the 
abolition current and landed upon the abolition platform, 
which acknowledges the pro-slavery character of the Consti- 
tution, and denounces it as a " covenant with hell," and thus, 
under the shadow of a false theory that will give the color 
of constitutionality to its acts, a great sectional party is cre- 
ated and an aggressive policy against the South, contrary 
to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, is adopted. Here 
this whole matter lies in a nut- shell. 

If all parties would simply fall back upon the truth — the 
reality of things, and acknowledge the fact of the pro-slavery 
character of the Constitution, and that the inconsistency of 
this fact with a Democratic-republican form of government 
had become more and more manifest every year since its 
adoption ; and if all parties would acknowledge the com- 
plete status of slavery as it existed when the Constitution was 
framed, and that in obedience to an overruling Providence, 
the status of the institution, as it then existed, had since 
been growing weaker year by year, the ruinous element of 
discord in our national politics would disappear ! 



209 

The curious notions about slavery that existed in England 
during the time of Henry VIII. , are worthy of being noted 
here. The following is the form of a manumission granted 
to two of his slaves by King Henry in 1514 : 

" Whereas ; originally God created all men free ; but afterwards the laws 
and customs of nations subjected some under the yoke of servitude. We think 
it pious and meritorious with God, to make certain persons absolutely free 
from servitude who are under villinage to us. Wherefore, we do accordingly 
manumit and free from the yoke of servitude, Henry Knight, a tailor, and John 
Erie, a husdbandman, our natives (i. e. our slaves), as being born in our manor 
of Stoke Clymmyslande, in our county of Cornwall, together with all their is- 
sue born, or hereafter to be born, and all their goods, chattels, and lands 
already acquired, or hereafter to be acquired by them ; so as the said two per- 
sons, with their issue, shall henceforth be deemed by us and our heirs free, 
and of free condition." 

It will not do to judge the fathers of the republic as 
regards the slavery question, from the anti-slavery stand- 
point of the present day. If we would obtain some satisfac- 
tory explanation of their acts, and comprehend the motives 
that actuated them in their political course, we must carry 
ourselves back to the times in which they lived. We must 
remember that those were times in which men's souls were 
tried. The first attempt at self-government had proved a 
failure, under the old Confederation ; jealousies were already 
rife, and conflicting interests were to be harmonized. The 
new form of government proposed was, in many respects, 
entirety experimental. The dark pall of slavery was drawn 
over this continent from ocean to ocean, and from pole to 
pole. The labor of the continent and its islands was slave 
labor. All Europe sustained the system, and had sustained 
it for centuries. Society and the industrial interests of the 
'colonies were so entirely based on the system of involuntary 
servitude, that its necessity was, for the time being, abso- 
lutely paramount. That the system of slavery as it then ex- 
isted should have been allowed, for a certain period, the 
importance then given to it, is perfectly easy of compre- 
hension ; and it is evident that no federal Union, no general 



210 * 

government could have been formed at that period without 
acknowledging the system of labor then existing, as an 
industrial necessity for the time being. But in view of those 
principles of liberty and equality upon which independence 
was achieved, and the clear and decided sentiments expressed 
by the early patriots, on the evils of slavery, there is certainly 
some reason to marvel that the founders of the great Ame- 
rican empire did not cause to be inserted in the instrument 
designed to serve as the Palladium of our liberties for all 
time, a single clause indicative of their fixed determination, 
that under this instrument human bondage should, sooner 
or later, come to an end throughout the land which it was 
supposed had been gloriously consecrated to human freedom. 
This point of inconsistency is the most disagreeable to touch 
upon, and the most difficult to explain. But we do find some- 
thing like a satisfactory explanation in the undoubted, undeni- 
able fact that the founders of the republic saw signs of decay 
in the system of slave labor ■ and having faith in an overruling 
Providence, they believed the economy of nature, in obe- 
dience to the law of progress, would, in due time, bring the 
unfortunate system to an end, and bury it with other false 
notions and superstitions of the past. That the fathers were 
right in this particular, we are fully prepared to demonstrate, 
and in doing this, we must explain wherein they committed 
a serious error, namely, in forming too high an estimate of 
those who should follow in their footsteps. Washington, 
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Pinckney, Randolph, 
and others, who pledged their all in the creation of the fede- 
ral Union, from their very nobility of nature, were unable to 
conceive that their glorious labors could be brought to naught 
in less than three-quarters of a century by a band of crazy 
fanatics and a low order of politicians, whose sole claim to 
humane principles, patriotism, and statesmanship lies in the 
successful exercise of the most common and the meanest of 
all talent— that of stirring up sectional strife, and causing 
people to hate each other. 



211 



THE DECLINE OF COMMERCIAL SLAVERY IN 

AMERICA. 

The economy of nature is the law of progress, and just in 
proportion as the economy of nature opens the way, society 
advances. The moral tone of every community depends, 
therefore, upon the development of its material interests, 
and all reforms in society are forced onward by expediency 
in its efforts to furnish the masses with the necessaries of life. 
Reform bides its time. 

A Christ appearing in the days of Moses, would either 
have been totally neglected, caged as a lunatic, or stoned to 
death by the rabble, and never heard of beyond those who 
did the deed. 

A Luther appearing in the days of Peter the Hermit, 
would have roamed about unheeded, or been drawn and 
quartered, and his flesh and memory consigned to the dogs. 

When Christ appeared, the down-trodden masses of 
Judea and the kingdoms round about were ready to take 
some heed of his democratic, liberal teachings. When 
Luther appeared, those whom religious despotism had 
ground into the dust were ready to rise up in aid of the sub- 
version of the doctrine of infallibility in the head of the 
Church, and sustain Christian liberty. These two reformers 
stand forth, towering above the disorder and gloom of their 
times, like bold headlands on a low tempestuous shore. 
Truth, according to our estimation of time, makes but slow 
progress. All the moral advancement made in society since 
the days of Moses, and we do not consider it very great, 
appears to be based on the teachings of Christ, and the 
reform of Martin Luther, and developed through the prac- 
tical application of the science of mechanics to labor by 
which the standard of labor is elevated to the benefit of the 
masses. 

Disinterested justice, humanity, and philanthropy, appear 
to have existed in individuals since the world began, but 



212 

never in communities. In communities these principles take 
root and flourish to the extent experience proves them 
applicable to the development of material interests. 

The necessities of man require the subjugation of the 
earth, and man, in his necessities, is led or forced to acknow- 
ledge and adopt the principles of justice first, humanity next, 
and philanthropy last. 

The decline of commercial slavery in America, we regard 
as a perfect exemplification of the truth of the foregoing 
remarks. Individual opposition to slavery in America, which 
had always existed, was of no effect until the latter part of 
the eighteenth century, when, after sustaining slavery for 
upwards of 150 years, the New England communities took 
measures to abolish the institution. An uncongenial climate 
and soil, combined with new and profitable developments in 
free labor, had, at this period, brought the institution of 
slavery to the last stages of existence throughout several of the 
northern colonies. What remained was becoming a nuisance. 

Rhode Island, we believe, claims the honor of first initiat- 
ing legislative measures of abolition. 

We are indebted to Arnold's History of Rhode Island for 
the following facts relative to the early legislation of that 
State on slavery : 

"In 1710, an act to prohibit the further importation of slaves into Rhode 
Island was moved in the Assembly. 

"In June, 1T14, the subject of slavery, which for four years before had 
received attention, was again considered, in consequence of the action of the 
town of Providence. ' As those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages 
of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others, 
reads the preamble, and then proceeds to enact, ' that for the future, no negro 
or mulattoe slave shall be brought into this colony/ or if any were brought in 
they should become free, except the servants of passing travellers, or of British 
colonists, residing here for a term of years, who, on their departure should take 
their slaves with them, or negroes brought from Africa by way of the West 
Indies, whose owners should give bonds to export them within one year. To 
prevent slaves being brought here for the purpose of receiving their freedom, 
and so becoming a charge upon the public, a fine was prescribed which was 
also attached to the harboring any slave thus introduced. In this decided 
action, Rhode Island again took the lead of all her sister colonies.' 7 



213 



The preamble to the foregoing act is somewhat peculiar, 
when we consider that the act itself liberates nobody, but 
simply stops the importation of slaves except for export, 
defines the rights of transient parties to their slave property, 
the regular slave trader among the rest, and imposes a fine 
upon all who bring slaves into the colony to receive their 
freedom, or harbor any slaves thus introduced, to prevent 
their " becoming a charge upon the public." 

In 1.775, an emancipation act was presented to the Rhode 
Island Assembly, declaring free " all negroes as well as all other 
persons born in this colony." 

This act was referred to a future session, and thus it 
remained until February, 1784, when it passed the Assembly. 
By this act, 

" All children of slave mothers, after the first of March, were to be free, the 
cost of their rearing to be paid by the towns where they were born ; and to 
defray these charges, the Council might bind out to service the males, till the 
age of 21, and the females till 18. The next year, the clause requiring them 
to be reared at the expense of the towns was repealed, and that charge was 
laid upon the owner of the mother." 

There is much in the foregoing extracts that is worthy of 
attentive consideration. With all the desire to be rid of the 
negro, Rhode Island was disposed to afford legal rights and 
courteous treatment to strangers holding slaves, and whom 
business or pleasure brought within the limit of their laws ; 
and in their act to prevent slaves being brought within the 
colony to receive their freedom, it is evident that the people 
would not then have facilitated the operations of the under- 
ground railroad, nor could the Assembly have been induced 
to pass a Personal Liberty Bill. 

Though Rhode Island was the first to take steps for the 
abolition of slavery, Massachusetts is entitled to the honor of 
first abolishing the institution. That State, in 1780, inserted 
in her bill of rights that " all men are born free and equal," 
and in 1783, the Supreme Court decided that this declara- 
tion was a bar thereafter to slaveholding in the State. Thus, 



214 

slavery, which practically had died a natural death in Massa- 
chusetts, was legally buried in 1783, and that State became 
the first patch of legalized free soil in America. 

In 1784, Connecticut passed an act which prohibited the 
introduction of slaves and declared that no negro or mulatto 
child born after the 1st day of March, 1784, should be held 
to servitude longer than till twenty-five years thereafter. 

In 1780, Pennsylvania passed an act prohibiting the intro- 
duction of slaves, and declaring children born thereafter of 
slave mothers, free. 

Virginia prohibited the further introduction of slaves in 
1778, and in 1782, all legal restrictions on emancipation were 
removed. 

Maryland pursued the same course in 17§3. 

New York and New Jersey prohibited the importation of 
slaves, but took no measures for the extinction of slavery 
within their limits till some years later, 

North Carolina, in 1786, declared the introduction of slaves 
into that State of " evil consequences and highly impolitic. 7 ' 

In 1792, New Hampshire abolished slavery after the 
manner of Massachusetts. 

The number of slaves in New England at the time mea- 
sures of abolition were taken, must have been less than 
5,000, worth in the aggregate $1,000,000 more or less. 

At this period, the most genuine feeling of dislike to the 
institution of slavery appears to have existed in those southern 
States where the number of slaves was the greatest, but whose 
material interests required its toleration and protection for 
the time being. The exports from Charleston, S. C, then 
exceeded those of any other port in the country, being some- 
thing like $3,000,000 in amount. 

But in the North, slavery on the soil was suffered 
to die a natural, peaceful death, and it was consigned 
to an economical tomb under the auspices of professions of 
justice and humanity, somewhat carelessly mingled with 
legal obsequies. 

Not so the slave trade. With the powerful political motive 



215 

in the North to prevent the increase of slaves in the South, 
each 50,000 of which gave a representative to the federal 
Congress, every northern State that voted on the question 
of making it unconstitutional to abolish the slave trade before 
1808, except Pennsylvania and New Jersey, States having 
little or no interest in that branch of commerce, voted aye- 
The slave trade clause was carried by the votes of New 
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, North 
Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, against Virginia, 
Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The opposition 
of Virginia was very decided, inasmuch as the slave trade 
was not for her interest, the migration of her surplus slave 
population to other States having already commenced. Mr. 
Madison was very strenuous that the slave trade should be 
limited to the year 1800, but he was overruled by precisely 
the same parties that are now known as Abolitionists in the 
North and Secessionists in the South. 

How exceedingly interesting it is to follow the crooks and 
turns of human interests and human prejudices. 

Rhode Island, whose interest in the slave trade exceeded that 
of any other State, was not represented in the Convention that 
framed the Constitution, but she ratified it May 29th, 1790. 

Seven-eighths of all the slaves imported into the colonies, 
and subsequently into the States, from first to last, legally up 
to 1808, and illegally for twenty years after, were imported 
for account of and b}' British subjects and northern United 
States citizens, the importations being about equally divided 
between the two nationalities. 

Leaving the British out of the question for the present, we 
argue that more might be said for the justice and humanity, 
and less for the thrift of the New England communities, espe- 
cially those given to commerce, had they not, after purging 
their soil of the unprofitable sin of slave labor, clung with 
such unyielding tenacity to another and the most profitable 
branch of the business — the slave trade. 

But in ravishing Africa of the heathen descendants of Ham, 
and transporting them to Christian countries, where, as the 



216 

servants of the sons of Japhet, they could enjoy the light of the 
Gospel, the ancient and deep-rooted idea that God's work 
was being done may have been the principal incentive that 
actuated northern citizens in following up that peculiar branch 
of commerce in human flesh so perseveringly. Let this be as 
it may, the charitable mantle of oblivion might with pro- 
priety be cast over the past, but fur the very sudden change 
of certain sections in the North from slave trading as God's 
work, to Abolitionism as God's work. Impartial history can 
never speak of that sudden change as legitimate or honest. 
It now appears as though its results to the country at large 
would prove disastrous in the extreme. 

In our remarks relative to the abolition of slavery in the 
northern States, we have not made mention of any particular 
State or section for the purpose of instituting invidious 
comparisons. No, nothing of the kind is intended. Such 
remarks as we have made on the subject, we consider appli- 
cable to all portions of the North that may be regarded as 
abolitionized, and we have said nothing except in the spirit 
of candor and justice, having no earthly motive to gratify 
except that which prompts us to do what little lies in our 
power to expose that spurious and cheap humanity which has 
its source in gall — which withers and destroys everything 
in life it touches, and upon which a great sectional party 
has acquired the administrative power in these dis-United 
States. 

In 1787, the last Continental Congress, sitting in New 
York simultaneously with the Convention in Philadelphia 
which framed the present Federal Constitution, passed what 
is known as " An ordinance for the government of the territory 
of the United States northwest of the Ohio.' 1 The following is 
the last article contained in this ordinance : 

" There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, 
otherwise than in punishment of crimes, where the parties shall be duly con- 
victed." 

Slavery was certainly national when it required special 



217 

legislation to secure freedom in any part of the common ter- 
ritory. 

The Ordinance passed unanimously. The territory referred 
to was that which had been ceded to the federation by Vir- 
ginia. There does not appear to have been any particular 
excitement relative to the Ordinance. It passed unanimously, 
and it would appear as if by universal consent, that something 
like a balance of political power should be maintained between 
free and slave territory, that fatal provision in the Constitu- 
tion giving a representative to Congress for every 50,000 
slaves, doubtless being the secret, if not the openly declared 
cause ; and though nothing like what now constitutes a 
sectional party existed in those days, the line then drawn has 
been made a sectional line by the Abolition-republican party 
of the present day. 

Agreeably to the provision in the Constitution of the 
United States, permitting the abolition of the slave trade in 
1808, Congress passed a law making the importation of 
negro slaves illegal from that period. 

The first act for the gradual abolition of slavery in the State 
of New York, was passed March 22, 1799. 

On the 9th of April, 1813, the legislature of that State 
passed "An act concerning slaves and servants" from which 
we extract the following : 

" I. Be it enacted by the people of the State of New York, represented in Senate 
and Assembly, That every negro, mulatto or mestee within this State, who is 
now a slave for life, shall continue such unless such slave shall be manumitted 
according to law ; and that the baptizing of any slave shall not be deemed to 
be a manumission of such slave : 

"Y. And be it further enacted, That no person held as a slave shall be 
imported, introduced or brought into this State, on any pretence whatever, by 
any person coming permanently to reside within this State for the space of nine 
months, shall be considered as having a permanent residence therein within the 
meaning of this act, but it shall not be construed to extend to such persons as 
may reside within this State for a shorter period : and if any person so held as 
slave, shall be imported, introduced or brought into this State, contrary to the 
true intent and meaning of this act, he shall be and is hereby declared free: and 
any slave who shall have been imported, introduced or brought into this State 



218 

contrary to the foregoing directions, since the first day of May, 1810, shall be 
and is hereby declared free. 

" VII. And be it further enacted, That every child born of a slave within 
this State after the fourth of July, in the year of our Lord 1?99, shall be free, 
but shall remain the servant of the owner of his mother and the executors or 
administrators of such owner, in the same manner as if such child had been 
bound to service by the overseers of the poor, and shall continue in such service, 
if a male, until the age of twenty-eight years, and if a female, until the age of 
twenty-five years." 

Under these provisions, slavery in the State of New York 
became entirely extinct about the year 1840. 

February 24th, 1820, New Jersey passed an act for the 
gradual abolition of slavery, and other purposes respecting 
slaves.- -R. S., 380. 

" Every child born a slave within this State since the fourth day of July, 
1804, or which shall hereafter be born as aforesaid, shall be free, but shall re- 
main the servant of the owner of his mother, and the executors, administrators, 
or assigns of such owners, in the same manner as if such child had been bound 
to service by the trustees or overseers of the poor, and shall continue in such ser- 
vice, if a male, until the age of twenty-five years, and if female, until the 
age of twenty-one years." 

The census of 1860 gave eight slaves as then living in New 
Jersey. 

A bill prohibiting slavery in all that territory purchased 
of Louisiana, lying north of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, 
north latitude, and known as the Missouri Compromise, 
passed the Congress of the United States in 1821. 

During the progress of these events in America, matters 
were taking a decided turn in certain parts of Europe, 
against the slave trade. 

Christian VIL, king of Denmark, or rather Frederick VI , 
who then ruled that kingdom as regent, took measures to abolish 
the slave trade in his dominions as early as 1792, and in 
1803, the trade was declared abolished. The Danes owned 
the West India islands, St. Thomas and St. Croix ; but owing 
to difficulties in suppressing the contraband traffic, the trade 
was not entirely suppressed until many years afterward. 



219 

In England, the abolition of the slave trade had become a 
subject of systematic agitation. It will be remembered that 
the Spanish asiento contract was obtained by Cadiz traders in 
1773. England had also lost her American colonies, which 
somewhat curtailed her slave trading operations ; and during 
the war with the colonies, her general traffic in human flesh 
with all parts of America had materially declined. Taking 
advantage of this state of affairs, the humanitarians, Gran- 
ville Sharpe and Mr. Clarkeson caused the subject to be 
brought before Parliament in 1786, and May 12th, 1789, 
Mr. Wilberforce moved a series of resolutions in Parliament, 
condemnatory of the traffic, and these resolutions passed. 
No practical result from this move was obtained, however, till 
after degrees of investigation and discussion had been reached 
and passed, and it was ascertained that the general interests 
of Great Britain and her American possessions, as well as 
those of justice and humanity, would be promoted by the 
non-importation of negro slaves. It required twenty years 
to bring English material interests up to the humanita- 
rian resolutions passed by Parliament in 1781). In March, 
1807, a bill abolishing the slave trade on and after Janu- 
ary 1st, 1808, passed both houses of Parliament by a large 
majority. 

France took measures to abolish the slave trade in 1814. 
In the treaty made with England at that time, Louis XVIII. 
declared in an additional article that he reciprocated the 
sentiments of England relative to a branch of commerce so 
repulsive to the principles of natural justice and contrary to 
the spirit of the age. It was fixed that the French should 
cease the traffic in five years from that date. In 1815, this 
stipulation was renewed, and in 1819, France, so far as she 
could by legislation, put a stop to the slave trade. 

In 1814, Spain stipulated with England to abolish the slave 
trade in 1822. 

Portugal, in 1815, also agreed with England that her slave 
trade should be abolished north of the equator, from that 
period, and everywhere in 1823. 



220 

* 

It now becomes necessary to turn to another course of 
events in another part of the world. 

While those measures tending to the extinction of slavery, 
which we have narrated, were being adopted, Napoleon was 
enacting his grand military drama in continental Europe. 
One of the direct consequences of the political changes caused 
in Europe, by Napoleon, was universal revolution through- 
out the Spanish American possessions, which, in the course 
of ten years, resulted in the complete overthrow and disap- 
pearance of the Spanish power on the American continent. 

All of these Spanish American Revolutions commenced in 
1810, and all had come to a successful close before 1825. 
One stupendous result of these revolutions was the elevation 
of over 7,000,000 aborigines from the level of brutes to that 
of human beings. 

In the following account of slavery, its original status, 
peculiarities, and decline in the Spanish American possessions, 
the various countries will be taken up in the order of their 
political divisions. 

MEXICO. 

The Mexican revolution commenced Sept. 16th, 1810, and 
terminated Feb. 24th, 1821. A federal Constitution was 
adopted Oct, 4th, 1824. 

In the plan of Iguala, under which independence was pro- 
claimed and secured, Art. 3d declares that the people of 
Mexico were " united, without any distinction between Ame- 
ricans and Europeans;" and in Art. 11th, that, " The dis- 
tinction of castes is abolished, which was made by the 
Spanish law, excluding them from the rights of citizenship. 
All the inhabitants of the country are citizens and equal, and 
the door of advancement is open to virtue and merit," 

By Art. 36, of the Constitution of 1824, it is declared that, 
" The nation is bound to protect, by wise and just laws, civil 
liberty, personal security, prosperity, equality of legal rights, 
and all the other rights of the individuals who compose it." 






221 

In 1829, under the Presidency of General Guerrero, the 
entire abolition of slavery was consummated by the following 
decree : 

"The President of the United Mexican States to the Inhabitants of the 
same : 

" Be it known — That, being desirous to signalize the anniversary of inde- 
pendence, in the year 1829, by an act of national justice and beneficence, which 
may redound to the advantage and support of so inestimable a good, which 
may further insure the public tranquillity ; which may tend to the agrandize- 
ment of the republic, and may reinstate an unfortunate portion of its inhabi- 
tants in the sacred rights which nature gave to them, and the nation should 
protect by wise and just laws, conformably with the dispositions of the thirtieth 
article of the constituent act, employing the extraordinary faculties which have 
been conceded to me, I have resolved to decree : 

Art. 1. — " Slavery is, and shall remain abolished in the republic. 

A r t. 2. — " In consequence, those who have hitherto been regarded a slaves, 
are free. 

Art. 3. — " Whensoever the condition of the treasury shall permit, the owners 

of the slaves shall be indemnified according to the terms which the law may 

dispose. 

" Guerrero. 
'•Mexico, Sept. 15th, 1829." 

Under the " Plan of Toluca," or Central Constitution of 
1836, and the Presidency of Bustamente, a further decree 
was issued, as follows : 

Art. 1. '' Slavery is abolished, without any exception, throughout the whole 
republic. 

Art. 2. " The owners of the slaves manumitted by the present law, or by the 
decree of Sept. 15, 1829, shall be indemnified for their interests in them, to be 
estimated according to the proofs which may be presented of their personal 
qualities ; to which effect, one appraiser shall be appointed by the Commissary 
General, or the person performing his duties, and another by the owner ; and 
in case of disagreement, a third, who shall be appointed by the respective con- 
stitutional alcalde ; and from the decision thus made there shall be no appeal. 
The indemnification mentioned in this article shall not be extended to the colo- 
nists of Texas, who may have taken part in the revolution in that depart- 
ment. 

Art. 3. " The owners to whom the original documents drawn up with re- 
gard to the proofs mentioned in the preceding article, shall be delivered gratis, 
shall themselves present them to the Supreme Government, which will authorize 
the general treasury to issue to them the corresponding orders for the amount 
of their respective interests. 



222 

Art. 4. " The payment of the said orders shall be made in the manner 
which may seem most equitable to the government, with the view of reconcil- 
ing the rights of individuals with the actual state of the public finances." 

April 5th, 1837. 

The Constitution of 1843, Bases organicas de la Republica 
Mejicana, of that year, declares, Title 2d, that : 

" No one is a slave in the territory of the nation, and that any slave who may 
be introduced, shall be considered free, and remain under the protection of the 
laws." 

The Constitution of 1847, which, in fact, is the old Fede- 
ral Constitution of 1824, does not reenact this clause ; but 
in the Acta de Reformas annexed to it, it is declared : 

Art. 1st. " That every Mexican, either by birth or naturalization, who has 
attained the age of twenty years, who possesses the means of an honest liveli- 
hood, and who has not been condemned by legal process to any infamous pun- 
ishment, is a citizen of the United Mexican States," and in Art. 5th, " In order 
to secure the rights of man, which the Constitution recognize, a law shall fix 
the guaranties of liberty, security, property and equality, which all the inhabi- 
tants of the republic enjoy, and shall establish the means to make them effec- 
tive." 

In the present Constitution of Mexico, that of 1857, we 
find the following: : 



o 



Art. 2. " In the republic all are born free. Slaves that set foot upon the 
national territory recover, by that single act, their liberty, and have a right to 
the protection of the laws." 

Art. 4. Every one is free to embrace the profession, industry or labor which 
pleases him, it being useful and honest, and to enjoy its products. Neither 
the one nor the other shall be interfered with, except through judicial sentence, 
when attacking the rights of a third party, or by an order of government, dic- 
tated in the terms prescribed by the law, when offending the rights of so- 
ciety. 

Art. 5. No one shall be obliged to render personal service without just com- 
pensation, and without his full consent. The law shall not authorize any con- 
tract which has for its object the loss, or the irrevocable sacrifice of personal 
liberty, whether it be for the purpose of labor, of education, or religious vow. 
Neither shall there be authorized agreements by which an individual consents 
to his own banishment or disfranchisement." 



223 

The foregoing legislative acts in Mexico, have direct 
reference to negro and mulatto slaves. Indian slavery and 
its abolition will be noticed hereafter. 

In 1530, considerable numbers of negro slaves were found 
in the State of Yera Cruz. As the country was explored and 
occupied by the Spaniards, this class of laborers came into 
demand, principally, to work the sugar plantations. Hence, 
in certain portions of the States of Vera Cruz, Puebla, Oajaca, 
Tabasco, Chiapas, G-uerrero and Colima, the valleys of Cuer- 
navaca, Cuautla etc., negro slaves in considerable numbers 
were employed for upward of two and a half centuries. 

It cannot be said, however, that negro slavery in Mexico 
was ever carried out extensive^, or proved much of a suc- 
cess. From the first of the eighteenth century to the latter 
part of the same, the institution was at the height of all the 
prosperity it ever enjoyed in that country ; and the number 
of negro slaves at any one time during this period, could not 
have exceeded 100,000. 

The natives of Mexico, in numbers and hardihood, proved 
too much, even for the iron rigor of Spanish rule, and although 
millions were destroyed, enough remained — probably as 
many as could be managed — to serve the general purposes 
of labor throughout New Spain. 

In the early part of the nineteenth century, we find the 
institution of negro slavery in Mexico tending to rapid decay. 
In the first place, the expense and risk of introducing negroes 
into those sections not immediately contiguous to Yera Cruz, 
had considerably increased; the Indians evinced more than or- 
dinary, restiveness, which had a bad effect on the negro ; and 
the negro slaves raised in the country, with their descendants 
by the Indians, called Zambos, were becoming vicious and 
unmanageable. Consequently, the demand for negroes fell 
off, and in certain sections measures were adopted to eman- 
cipate the negro slaves and work them under a system of 
free labor. 

This experiment was fully and successfully tried on some 
of the largest sugar plantations. In the valleys of Cuerna- 



224 

vaca and Cuautla Amilpas, the principal proprietors liberated 
a certain number of their slaves annually, and encouraged 
them to remain on the estates as free laborers. So success- 
ful did this system prove, that, on many of the largest estates 
in Cuernavaca, there was not a single negro slave in the year 
1808. The policy of this measure became still more apparent in 
18.10, for as soon as the revolution broke out, those planters 
who had not adopted the system of gradual emancipation 
were abandoned at once by their slaves, and forced, in 
some instances, to give up working their estates ; while those 
who had provided themselves, in time, with a mixed caste of 
free laborers, retained, even during the worst of times, a suf- 
ficient number of hands to enable them to cultivate their 
lands, although upon a reduced scale. 

The labor of the estates in Mexico worked under the free 
system, proceeded without compulsion, anything like coercive 
measures being scarcely known. But such a mixture of 
negroes, Indians and Zambos was productive of a very low 
order of civilization. 

We find in " Ward's Mexico," written in 1827, a compari- 
son made between the result of free labor on sugar estates in 
Mexico, and slave labor on sugar estates in Cuba, as follows : 

" One hundred and fifty slaves are employed, in the island of Cuba, upon a 
plantation capable of producing one thousand cases, or 16,000 arrobas* of sugar 
(vide Humboldt's Essai Politique sur Pile ale Cuba), while, in the valley of Cu- 
autla, one hundred and fifty free laborers are found sufficient for a hacienda, 
which yields from 32 to 40,000 arrobas. Thus (supposing the expense in other 
respects to be the same), in the one case, the produce of each individual would 
be 2,666 lbs., and in the other 5,332 lbs., or even 6,666 lbs., taking the 
maximum of 40,000 arrobas. The correctness of this calculation depends of 
course upon the comparative fertility of the soil of the island of Cuba, and in 
the valley of Cuautla Amilpas, respecting which I am not competent to give an 
opinion. There is no reason, however, to suppose that there is any superiority 
in the soil of Cuautla, sufficiently great to account for so marked a difference in 
the amount of the sugar, raised by an equal number of laborers ; for the ele- 
vation of the valley above the level of the ocean, renders it impossible to apply 
Humboldt's estimate of the extraordinary fertility of Vera Cruz to the planta- 
tions of Cuautla or Cuernavaca." 

* An arroba is 25 pounds. 



225 

In view of the foregoing, let it not be said that the experi- 
ment of free negro labor in the tropics, on a large scale, was 
never successfully tried. 

It is a curious fact, and worthy of note, that the process 
of gradually abolishing negro slavery commenced simulta- 
neously in New England and the Spanish colonies of Mexico, 
for precisely the same cause, namely, the institution had 
become unprofitable. 

In New England, slavery was abolished by law, while in 
Mexico, the measures taken to this end were voluntary on 
the part of the Spanish planters. 

Here we find the cold and sterile North and the hot and 
fruitful tropics, the cool, calculating and thrifty New Eng- 
lander, and the extravagant, showy, hard-hearted Spaniard — 
giving in their evidence against negro slavery and abolish- 
ing it as an unprofitable institution. 

Before the Mexican revolution had terminated, in 1821, 
nearly every vestige of negro slavery in Mexico had dis- 
appeared. Many of the slaves fled, others were liberated, 
and when Guerrero issued his decree of immediate and 
universal emancipation in 1829, there were not 10,000 ne- 
groes and mulattoes held as slaves throughout the entire 
republic, to take advantage of the liberty thus decreed. 

In the northern tier of Mexican States, in Durango, San 
Luis Potosi, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Queretaro, the negro 
was rarely seen except as the servant of a Spaniard. Con- 
siderable numbers of mulattoes are found in the State of 
Guerrero. Some remain in the States of Oajaca, Tabasco and 
Chiapas. The term Lobo is generally applied to these 
mulattoes, from the peculiar tint of their complexion, which 
resembles that of the Mexican wolf called Lobo. In 
Yera Cruz and vicinity, a few negroes, and quite a number 
of mulattoes, known as Jarochos, are concentrated. In 1803, 
Humboldt, in his classification of the inhabitants of the city 
of Mexico, gave 10,000 mulattoes. This race has disap- 
peared, and the pure negro is not to be found on any of the 
table lands of the country. The dry and rarefied atmosphere 
of those regions is destructive to his race. 



226 

We do not believe there is enough negro blood in all 
Mexico to make 20,000 pure negroes, notwithstanding a pro- 
minent legislator very gravely remarked to us recently, that 
he calculated one-third of the Mexican population was of the 
pure negro race, which would give about 2,500,000 negroes 
to the republic. 

The question of reestablishing or extending negro slavery 
over Mexico, which is now a prominent subject of agitation 
in the public mind, can be disposed of in very few words. 

The Cordilleras occupy the great central portion of Mexico, 
leaving a strip of low land on either coast, narrow and irregu- 
lar in outline, known as the tierra caliente ; and these low 
lands are cut up at frequent intervals by mountain ridges and 
spurs — the whole being of volcanic formation. Now the 
apostles of the " irrepressible conflict v doctrine must make it 
appear in the first place, that the slavery propagandists can 
cause the Mexican Cordilleras, the backbone of the country, 
with all the detached spurs and ridges, to sink into the earth, 
and leave in their place, low, hot, moist and rich plains. 
Next, the irrepressibles must prove that the slavery exten- 
sionists can speedily annihilate some seven or eight millions 
of Mexicans, who, in their turn, will fight for freedom to the 
last drop of their blood. And lastly, it must be made to ap- 
pear that the slave trade can be opened, and the price of 
good field hands reduced to $200. All this being accom- 
plished, slavery extension into Mexico might stand some 
chance. 

Take comfort, then, O ye simple-minded natives in the 
North, who have been taught to shiver and shake in holy 
horror of slavery extension. Eschew the gospel of uneasi- 
ness and be comforted. Do not attempt to take the Higher 
Law into your own hands, to work out the end the Higher 
Law had already accomplished some time before you came 
into existence. The only difficulty is, you do not acknow- 
ledge the Higher Law, whose commands you pretend to 
obey. Cast aside, therefore, your superstitious notions ; 
eschew Abolition, Jacobin teachings, and study our frontiers 
— Mexico, nature, God. If you cannot bring yourselves 



227 

right on the subject, train up your children in the way 
they should go, and let us have some hope that the next gene- 
ration will repair the national mischief perpetrated by the 
present. 

The Subject of Indian Slavery in Mexico, and the 
Spanish American countries generally, while under the rule 
of Spain, requires some notice here. 

No sooner did the natives of the West India islands become 
acquainted with the Spaniards who thronged to their shores 
immediately on the discovery, than they began to evince a 
very strong and very natural aversion to the strangers. Las 
Casas declared that the Indians shunned the Spaniards as 
naturally as "sparrows the sparrowhawk." This led to coer- 
cive measures on the part of the Spaniards, looking at first 
to intercourse simply, but which soon resulted in the forcible 
subjugation of the natives, the natural and speedy consequence 
of which was their abasement to a horribly destructive system 
of slavery. The peculiarly ingenious manner in which the 
Spaniards blended deviltry with piety, and which cannot now 
be called one of the "lost arts," caused them to look upon 
the Indians as cattle with souls. They hunted the poor 
natives, subjugated them, and worked up their bodies that 
their souls might enter paradise ; the idea of which, when 
told that he would meet Christians there, drove a famous 
cacique to such despair that he went and hung himself. 

In 1495, Columbus sent back to Spain from Hispaniola, four 
ships loaded with Indian slaves. 

In 1496, Bartholomew Columbus sent to Spain 300 Indian 
slaves from Hispaniola. 

In 1498, Columbus sent to Spain, in five vessels, 600 Indian 
slaves. All these Indians were captured in the island of His- 
paniola by Spanish war parties. 

Columbus, in his letters to Los Reyes, estimates that, " in 
the name of the sacred Trinity," there may be sent as many 
slaves as sale could be found for in Spain, and that the value 
of the slaves, for whom there would be a demand to the num- 



228 

ber of 4,000, as he calculated from certain information, and 
of the logwood, would amount to forty cuentos, equivalent to 
about $60,000. It was also proposed at this time to exchange 
Indian slaves for goods wanted from the mother country. 

In the year 1497, letters patent were issued from Los 
Eeyes, authorizing repartimientos, or partitions of lands in 
the Indies to the colonizing Spaniards. Following upon this 
system of dividing up the lands, regulations that the lands so 
divided should be cultivated by the Indians under the direc- 
tion of their caciques, were established. An improvement 
upon this system was soon devised, namely, stocking the 
lands with Indian slaves who should belong to the estate and 
perform the labor thereof. Later, a new form of reparti?ni- 
ento is found. Antonio de Leon the jurist, defines it as fol- 
lows : 

" Repartimiento in New Spain, is that which is made every week of the 
Indians who are given for mines and works by the judges for that purpose (los 
Inezes Repartidores) , for which the pueblos contribute throughout the twenty 
weeks of the year, what they call a dobla (a Spanish coin), at the rate of ten 
Indians for every hundred ; and the remainder of the year what they call a 
sencilla (another Spanish coin),- at the rate of two Indians for every hundred. 
The above rate was for works and cultivation of land. When it was for mines, to 
work for which particular pueblos were set aside, it was a contribution for the 
whole year, at the rate of four Indians for every hundred !" 

At an early day, a simple division of Indians was made 
among the colonists, giving to one 50, to another 100, to 
another 500, to another 1,000, etc., in encomienda, as it was 
called, after the following form, or deed as first given by 
Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, in 1503 : 

" To you, such a one, is given an encomienda of so many Indians with such a 
cacique, and you are to teach them the things of our holy faith." 

A correspondence between Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, 
and their majesties, touching the Indians at this time, is 
worthy of note, as involving a variety of interests, and the 
kind of freedom decreed to the Indians. 

Ovando wrote that the Indians fled from the Spaniards and 
could not be induced to hold intercourse with them ; all of 



229 

which proved a decided hindrance to their conversion and 
seriously retarded the prosperity of the colony. To which 
their majesties replied, directing Ovando to compel the Indians 
to have dealings with the Spaniards, and work on such terms 
as he might think fit. It was further ordered that the In- 
dians should go and hear mass and be instructed in the faith ; 
and that they should do all these things u as free persons, 
for so theij are" 

The word encomienda originally implied a " Commandery in 
a military order," but in its application to the division of 
Indians, it signified a preceptory charge. Later, we find the 
Spanish jurists thus defining the institution : 

" Encomienda is a right conceded by royal bounty (a merced y voluntad del 
Rey) to well-deserving persons in the Indies, to receive and enjoy for themselves 
the tributes of the Indians who should be assigned to them, with a charge of 
providing for the good of those Indians in spiritual and temporal matters, and 
of inhabiting and defending the provinces where these encomiendas should be 
granted to them." 

In such language as this were the aborigines found in 
America by the Spaniards, condemned to unmitigated body 
and soul-crushing slavery, the profits arising from the system 
being divided between the crown, the church, and the lordly 
encomiendero . 

At an early date, the capitation tax was established, by 
which each Indian was required to pay a sum varying from 
three to fifteen dollars per annum. Then came the terrible 
Mita law, by which a certain number of Indians were required 
to labor by turns in the mines and produce a stated amount. 
The sufferings caused the Indians by this law are almost 
beyond belief. Some of the mining districts in various parts 
of Spanish America were nearly depopulated by it, and in 
consequence, this law was mitigated from time to time, and 
finally declared abolished during the latter part of the 
reign of Charles III. 

The policy of Spain was to create a market in her American 
colonies for her own products and manufactures — to supply 
them with provisions as well as fabricated goods — and receive 



230 

in return, the largest possible amount that could be extracted 
from the mines. The commerce and trade growing out of all 
this was secured to the Spaniards as a monopoly ; and to 
support the colonial government and keep up the flow of 
treasure into the royal coffers, the industry of the colonies was 
taxed. The contrivance of Spain was to aggrandize herself 
at the expense of the common rights of humanity ; and among 
the millions of aborigines who toiled under Spanish domina- 
tion, the fell purpose of this contrivance was wrought out, 
causing an amount of human woe that the mind of man can- 
not compass. 

It is the general custom among writers to condemn the 
Spanish colonists for their cruel treatment of the Indians, and 
hold the government of Spain excusable. By giving certain 
extracts from Las Leyes de las Indias, the Acts of the Council 
of the Indias, and royal decrees, in which the Indians are 
declared hombres libres, and otherwise spoken of as persons 
who must be protected and favored, the general impression 
is created that the government of Spain is in no very great 
degree, responsible for the cruel treatment of the Indians by 
the conquerors and colonists of Spanish America. We take 
a contrary view of this matter, and believe the responsibility 
of nearly all the dire evils brought upon the Indians by the 
Spanish adventurers, is directly chargeable upon the home 
'government. 

After the conquerors of Spanish America had killed off a 
great many millions of the aborigines, and thus reduced their 
numbers to a manageable figure, it became apparent to the 
crown that a stop must be put to the further wholesale 
destruction of the Indians, in order that laborers might be 
had to develop what was regarded as the great resource of 
the New World, namely, the mines. Negroes could not be 
made available for this purpose, and therefore it became 
necessary to preserve enough of the native population to 
meet that requirement. 

This population being brought into the work, it became 
necessary to guard against tmeutrs and rebellions, that the 



231 

hazard of holding the colonial possessions and the expense 
of maintaining their government, might not be unduly aug- 
mented. It became necessary, therefore, to reduce the 
intelligence and position of the Indians to as near the level 
of the brute as possible, and at the same time have a care 
not to so oppress, as to drive to that desperation which will 
cause humanity, even of the lowest order, to turn upon the 
oppressor. 

To meet these necessities in a pious way, the laws of 
Spain regulating the Indians of the colonies, appear to have 
been framed. For every clause tending to protect and favor 
the Indian, there were two holding him to the most abject 
servitude. 

It may be said that the slavery of the Spanish- American 
Indians on the continent, was of a harsher character than that 
of the negroes, inasmuch as the negro, who had cost 300 or 
400 dollars cash, was valued higher and treated with more 
consideration than the native Indian, whose first cost was the 
catching and breaking in, and who was held to the soil by 
ties of association and kindred. 

The intellectual capacities of the Indians of Mexico were 
naturally of a finer and far higher order than those of the 
negro, and for this reason, it was necessary to practise 
greater cruelty and enforce more systematic degradation 
upon the Indian, in order to keep him under, than upon the 
negro. 

There was only one exception to this rule. The absolute 
sale of Indians for transfer from country to country and point 
to point, almost entirely ceased after the West India islands 
were supplied with negroes. This did not form a part of 
the system on the continent, as the removal of the Indians 
from where they were born and reared, would break the 
strongest tie by which they were held in bondage. In this 
respect, it must be said that the status of the Indian slave 
in the Spanish possessions on the continent, was different from 
that of the negro slave. It fell to the lot of the Spanish- 
American Indian to live and die a wretched slave to rapa- 



232 

cious, foreign task-masters, in the land of his birth, the home 
of his race. 

The following is an extract from the writings of Las 

Casas : 

" As for the continent it is certain, and what I myself know to be true, that 
the Spaniards have ruined ten kingdoms there, bigger than all Spain, by the 
commission of all sorts of barbarity and unheard of cruelties. They have driven 
away or killed all the inhabitants, so that all these kingdoms are desolate to this 
day (1560), and reduced to a most deplorable condition, though this was the 
best peopled country in the world. We dare assert, without fear of exaggerat- 
ing, that in the space of those 40 years in which the Spaniards exercised their 
intolerable tyranny in this New World, they unjustly put to death above 
12,000,000 of people, counting men, women and children; and it may be 
affirmed, without injury to truth, upon a just calculation, that during this space 
of time above 50,000,000 have died in these countries." 

The general truth of Las Casas' statements cannot be 
doubted ; but it is to be hoped that his stupendous numerals 
are exaggerations. 

We have given 7,000,000 as the number of Indian slaves 
liberated by the Spanish American revolutions. This is pro- 
bably a low estimate. In 1823, Humboldt estimated the 
Indian population of Spanish America, the civilized or 
settled Indians, as they are called, to be 7,530,000. The num- 
ber must have been considerably greater in 1810, when the 
revolution first broke out. General Miller estimates the 
number of human beings destroyed by the sword in Spanish 
America between 1810 and 1825, at 1,000,000! Miller, 
though a partisan, was considered candid and well informed. 
The Indians were destroyed by thousands on the slightest 
pretext. It has been stated on good authority that Morillo 
shed more blood in one year, in the single State of Vene- 
zuela, than was shed in the thirteen North American colonies 
during the seven years of their Revolutionary struggle. 

It is no exaggeration, therefore, to say that the Spanish 
American revolutions broke the fetters of 7,000,000 of human 
beings, and raised them from the brute level to that of 
humanity. Of this number, something more than half must 
be allotted to Mexico. 



233 

One of the human beings thus liberated and elevated, is 
Benito Juarez, President of the republic of Mexico, a pure 
Indian, and said to be of the Toltec race, driven from Ana- 
huac by the Aztecs — he who has clung to the last hope of his 
race and nation with a tenacity that death alone could relax, 
and by his unyielding determination, pure patriotism, and in- 
corruptible integrity, guided the nation through a desperate 
and bloody revolution — the only real revolution they have 
had in Mexico since the independence — and saved his country. 

Away down in Oajaca, where the winds sweep through 
the tall cypress in mournful sighs, and the stupendous and 
gloomy surroundings of nature invite to profound and 
melancholy repose, is Mitla. The signification of this word in 
the Indian language of the country, is, the place of sadness ; and 
here are found the extraordinary remains of what are known 
as the sepulchral palaces of the ancient kings of Mexico. 
From this region comes President Juarez. Rising as it were 
from the tombs of his ancestors, he liberates his country 
from the evils imposed upon it by a nation not as old as 
those visible remains of the sepulchres of his own race. In 
Juarez we see a mysterious connection between the un- 
known, dead Past, and the living Present. In Juarez we see 
the romance and* the reality of Mexico. 

At the conclusion of the Mexican war of independence in 
1821, the Spanish regime by which the Indians were held in 
bondage under the encomiendas and repartimientos, the laws of 
tribute, distinction of castes, etc., disappeared. The Plan of 
Iguala, proclaimed 1821, says in Article 11 : " The distinction 
of castes is abolished, which was, by the Spanish law, excluding 
them from the rights of citizenship." This referred to the 
Indians. The decree of Guerrero in 1829 referred to negro 
slaves,- and whatever may have been the faults of the Mexican 
nation since it cast off the Spanish yoke, the numerous extracts 
that have been given from their various constitutions and 
decrees, evince a deep and undying hatred to the system of 
involuntary servitude, and an unequivocal denial of the doc- 
trine that man has a right to hold property in man. 



234 

Peonage, which some characterize as a species of masked 
slavery, is a system by which the labor of the country is regu- 
lated, having been established by the Mexican government 
since the war of independence. This peonage is not masked 
slavery, nor is there anything of slavery attached to the sys- 
tem. The Mexican peon can be one of the most indepen- 
dent laboring men in existence, if he chooses ; or he can 
enjoy the luxury of being in debt. 

YUCATAN. 

This former Captain-Generalship having joined with Mexico 
in the war of independence, became incorporated with that 
republic under the federal Constitution of 1824, and con- 
sequently, has been governed by the same legislation as 
Mexico. 

Negro slavery scarcely ever had existence in Yucatan. 

GUATEMALA. 

On the 21st September, 1821, the Captain-Generalship of 
Guatemala became an independent State, and united itself 
with the republic of Mexico ; but on the 1st July, 1823, it 
became a separate government, and eventually the confede- 
ration of the five Central American States of Guatemala, 
San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, with 
the territory of the Mosquito, was formed. 

A constitution for the new republic was adopted by the 
National Assembly on the 22d of November, 1824. 

Squire's Nicaragua says : 

11 The Constitution of 1824 contained guaranties of individual rights, the 
representative principle, habeas corpus, and the liberty of the press. 

" Among the acts of the Assembly which formed the Constitution was a 
Decree issued on the 11th April, 1824, abolishing slavery absolutely and at 
once, and providing against its reestablishment at any time or in any part of 
the republic. 

" The slave trade was declared to be piracy, and the heaviest penalties were 
declared against all persons who should engage in it directly or indirectly. 

" To the Republic of Central America, therefore, belongs the glory of having 



235 

been the first country in the world to abolish negro slavery. And to the 
policy marked out by its first constituent assembly, it has ever and faithfully 
adhered. It was the adoption of this measure which led to its first dispute 
with Great Britain, that loud-mouthed advocate of philanthropy, when philan- 
thropy is profitable, and never otherwise. 

"Will it be credited, that as late as 1840, a claim enforced by vessels of 
war, was made against Central America by the British Government, for slaves 
who had fled from Belize, and secured their freedom under the Constitution 
of Central America ? Yet such is the fact — the black, damning fact/' 

In all the republic of Central America, negro slavery 
never attained to any great extent. Yery few negroes and 
but little evidence of negro blood can now be found in 
Guatemala, or the Central American states. 

In 1838, the confederacy was dissolved, Guatemala, as 
well as other states, becoming independent republics. 

NEW GRANADA. 

In 1810, the Spanish authority in the Vice-Royalty of 
New Granada and Captain-Generalship of Venezuela, was 
thrown off, and an incessant war against that power main- 
tained until 1824, when the Spaniards were finally van- 
quished. 

In 1819, the Congress of Angostura met, and the Repub- 
lic of Colombia was proclaimed, in which Venezuela was 
united with New Granada, and on the 30th August, 1821, a 
federal Constitution was adopted. 

This union, however, lasted only ten years. In November, 

1829, Venezuela seceded from the republic, and in May, 

1830, the province now known as Ecuador, also withdrew. 
The central part of Colombia then constituted itself the 

republic of New Granada, by a decree adopted on the 21st 
November, 1831, and in 1832 a new Constitution was pro- 
claimed, which, in 1842-3 was revised, and was afterward 
known as the reformed Constitution of 1843. 

A Report by the Minister of the Interior of the republic 
of Colombia, presented to the National Congress on the 22d 



*-' 



236 

April, 1823 (when Yenezeula and Ecuador were included in 
the republic), says, under the head of ;< Slavery " : 

" The law of 21st July, 1821, gave liberty to the children of female slaves, 
abolished the trade in negroes, and the boards of manumission have since been 
in activity throughout the republic." 

In December of the same year (1823), the period fixed for 
the liberation of slaves by purchase, it was carried into effect, 
and the Legislature of Colombia received the blessings of 
thousands restored to the condition of men. 

By a law of the Congress of the republic of Colombia, 
passed on the 18th of February, 1825, the slave trade was 
declared piracy, and made punishable with death. 

The first General Congress of Colombia passed the following 
law with reference to the Indian population, 11th October, 
1821: 

" Art. 1. The Indigenos of Colombia, called Indians in the Spanish code, 
shall not in the future pay the impost known by the degrading name of 
'tribute/ nor shall they be obliged to render any service or labor to any class 
of persons without the payment of just compensation, which shall be stipulated 
beforehand. 

" They shall be in all respects equal to other citizens, and shall be protected 
by the same laws ." 

All these laws and provisions of the former republic of 
Colombia and of New Granada, with regard to slavery and 
the rights of the Indians, were reaffirmed by and incorporated 
into the revised code of laws of New Granada, which went 
into effect on the 1st of October, 1843. 

VENEZUELA. 

' This Captain-Generalship having united with the Yice- 
Royalty of New Granada in the revolution of 1810, became a 
part of the republic of Colombia, and was regulated by the 
Constitution of 1821, and subsequent laws, by which the abo- 
lition of slavery was consummated the same as in other 
States of the Republic. 



237 



PERU. 



The Peruvian revolution commenced in 1810 and the in- 
dependence of the country was proclaimed on the 28th of 
July, 1821. Among the first legislative acts of the new 
government was a decree which declared that the children of 
slaves born in Peru after the 28th July, 1821, should be free. 

This was followed by another, abolishing the tribute, and 
enacting that the aborigines be thenceforth denominated 
Peruvians like the Creoles. 

In Art. 152 of the first Constitution of Peru it is declared 
that no one is born a slave in the republic, neither does any 
one enter from other countries who is not made free when he 
treads on Peruvian soil. 

Should any Peruvian be found guilty of importing slaves 
into the republic for the purpose of traffic, the Constitution 
declares that he shall be deprived of his rights of citizenship. 
The internal traffic, however, continued up to 1855, though 
it was confined to buying and selling such slaves as existed in 
the country before the war of independence began, or to 
such of their offspring as were born before the year 1820, 
when Peru was no longer the acknowledged patrimony of 
the Spaniards. 

By decree of the Constitutional Government of Peru, in 
1855, slavery was finally and entirely abolished, and the 
capitation tax to which the Indians had been subjected since 
the time of the Spaniards was made to cease. 

The government of Peru obligated itself to pay for the 
negro slaves, some 25,000 in number, liberated by the decree 
of 1855. 

As in Mexico, negro slavery in Peru was confined to a few 
agricultural districts of limited extent. The principal districts 
were lea, Cafieta, Santa, Huacho, and the neighborhood of 
the capital. 

The Indians only were employed to work the mines. 
These are located in the higher regions, where the negro 
# does not thrive. We have stated that negro slaves were 



238 

never taken by the Spaniards to work the mines on the con- 
tinent. 

CHILI. 

The revolution was commenced, and a Provisional Go- 
vernment established in Chili in 1810. Independence was 
declared on the 12th February, 1818. 

The present Constitution was adopted on the 25th May, 
1833. 

By this Constitution, slavery is abolished forever, the slave 
trade forbidden under severe penalties, and every person who 
treads the soil of the republic is declared free. 

No stranger engaged in the slave trade is permitted to 
reside in Chili. 

LA PLATA 

In 1816, the Constitutional Assembly of the Provinces of 
the Rio de la Plata declared those countries independent 
of Spain, and in 1821, the Spanish troops were finally 
expelled. 

In 1824, the independence of the Provinces of the La 
Plata was recognized by the English government. 

The slave trade was abolished under severe penalties, 
by a decree of the first Constitutional Assembly of the 
Provinces in 1813. 

During the war of independence, slavery in the Provinces 
became nearly extinct, mainly by liberations. Entire regi- 
ments were formed of the blacks thus liberated, and under 
the name of libertos, they were enrolled in the service of the 
republic. At one time their numbers reached as high as 
5,000. 

The slaves had also the privilege of buying their freedom 
at any time, by paying the original purchase money. By 
these means, slavery was gradually and quietly extinguished 
in the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata. 



239 

BRAZIL. 
( Originally Portuguese.) 

We have not included some 300,000 Brazilian Indians, in 
our enumeration of Indian slaves liberated by the revolutions 
of 1810 on the continent. At first, the Portuguese enslaved 
the Indians in Brazil, and their system of slavery ' was as 
burdensome and destructive as that of the Spaniards ; but 
there appears to have been a determined and partially suc- 
cessful action, on the part of the Portuguese government, to 
protect the aborigines of Brazil. 

By a decree of the Portuguese government, in 1755, the 
natives of Brazil were declared free and entitled to the name 
and all the rights of citizens ; and though this had very little 
effect in elevating that degraded class, and though, in certain 
localities, considerable numbers of the natives continued in 
abject servitude, it cannot be said that the few hundred 
thousand Indians scattered throughout the vast empire of 
Brazil were slaves (like the Spanish- American Indians) when 
Brazil became independent of Portugal in 1822, and com- 
menced her new political career, under a constitutional 
hereditary monarchy, with Dom Pedro I. as emperor. 

Until quite recently, no light shade can be given to the 
history of slavery in Brazil. That country has been one 
immense grave-yard for Africans. The short run from the 
coast of Africa to Brazilian ports, the great extent of coun- 
try adapted to negro labor, and the destructive system under 
which slaves were worked, induced, from the commencement 
of its occupation by the Portuguese, an extravagant importa- 
tion of negro slaves ; and it is only within ten years that this 
traffic in Brazil has yielded to the spirit of the age. 

The number of negro slaves imported into Brazil from 
Africa between 1530 and 1850, a period of 320 years, we 
estimate as follows : 



240 





Avera 


ge per annum. 


From 1530 to. 1600 


5,000 


300,000 


From 1600 to 1100 


. 15,000 


1,500,000 


From 1700 to 1800 


. 20,000 


2,000,000 


From 1800 to 1820 


. 30,000 


600,000 


From 1830 to 1840 


. 85,000 


850,000 


From 1840 to 1850 


. 50,000 


500,000 


Total in 320 years 


5,150,000 



The abolition of the slave trade by the civilized nations, 
had the effect to concentrate, in a great measure, the expiring 
struggles of this infernal traffic on the shores of Brazil. The 
capacities of the country to consume negroes, and its favorable 
location for the trade, caused it to be a popular rendezvous 
of the contrabandist as. The trade raged with great fury from 
1830 to 1850, when the public mind became suddenly aroused 
from its torpid state on the subject, and the trade came 
suddenly to an end. In 1850, in accordance with the En- 
glish treaty, the government of Brazil instituted measures to 
prevent the landing of slaves on its shores ; and so vigorously 
and successfully were those measures carried out, that in 
three years the slave trade was completely suppressed. For 
many years the importation of negro slaves into Brazil had 
averaged 50,000 per annum. In 1840, the number reached 
100,000. In 1853, there was not a single disembarkation. In 
1856, a slaver, cruising along the coast with a cargo of 
negroes, did not succeed in selling a single slave, though she 
touched at five different points. 

The great and sudden change that has recently taken place 
in Brazil, relative not only to the slave trade but to the slave 
labor in the country, is very remarkable, and preeminently 
significant of the rapid decline and speedy downfall of com- 
mercial slavery on the American continent. 

Says Mr. Fletcher, in his interesting work, " Brazil and 
the Brazilians" " Slavery is doomed in Brazil." 

It is easy to perceive that the institution has but a sickly 
existence in the public mind in Brazil, and that the better 



241 

quality and greater economy of free labor are rapidly gaining 
on slave labor in that vast empire. 

"We give an extract from the Mexican Papers, No. 4, page 
164, which properly comes in here : 

" By the Brazilian law, a slave can, at any time, appear before a magistrate, 
have his price fixed, and purchase his freedom. There is a system of coloniza- 
tion in progress, intended to supply the gradually diminishing quantity of 
slave labor, and the statesmen of the empire are said to be devoting much time 
and attention to discover the best means of promoting immigration. Germany, 
Portugal, the Azores and Madeira are constantly supplying laborers, attracted 
by the prospect which Brazil holds out to them, and there seems to be no doubt 
that the free African population will eventually fully suffice for these occupa- 
tions in a tropical country for "which the white race is necessarily unfitted. 

" For more than three hundred years, the entire agricultural and manufac- 
turing interests of Brazil, from north to south, from east to west, have been 
based on slave labor. The institution of slavery has entered more thoroughly 
into the industrial system of Brazil than it has into that of the United States. 
Natural causes -favor the system of slave labor in Brazil more than they do in 
the United States, and though the number of slaves in the former country 
reaches 3,000,000, the institution of slavery is steadily and surely coming to au 
end in that empire." 

The rapid decline of commercial slavery in Brazil, without 
abolition societies, abolition journals, or any of that peculiar 
abolition venom which infects the northern, part of this 
country, is a subject worthy of profound reflection. Neither 
abolitionists nor slavery propagandists can find any comfort 
in Brazil. Nature and the laws of society are working ou4 
the problem of slavery in that country, in a manner not at 
all favorable to the peculiar ideas or interests of the extreme 
wing of either of the two great political parties in this 
country. 

Left to herself, uncursed by an army of howling abolition 
fanatics, and knowing nothing of licentious liberty in politics, 
Brazil, that vast empire, which, perhaps, fills the blackest 
space in the great black page of American history, is rapidly 
emerging from the dark past, and apparently entering upon 
a grand and prosperous future. 

The government of Brazil 'finds it extremely difficult to 



242 

obtain an accurate census of the population of the country, 
particularly of the aboriginal portion. This class in the in- 
terior are very suspicious that taking their number has some- 
thing to do with taxation or enlistment for soldiers ; and while 
they will assist in obtaining an account of the deaths that 
take place, they will fight before allowing a register of births 
to be kept, or anything, in fact, to indicate the names, num- 
bers, and condition of the living. 

The following is the government estimate of the popula- 
tion in Brazil, in 1856. 



White population 2,000,000 

Free mixed do. 
Mulattoes, etc. 

Civilized aboriginal do. ...... 800,000 

Mixed slave do 600,000 

African slave do 2,600,000 



I 1,121,000 



1,121,000 

The population of Brazil has materially changed its rela- 
tive proportions since 1856. 

Mr. Fletcher mentions as a striking fact " that emigrants 
did not begin to arrive from Europe by thousands until 
1852. In 1850-51, the slave trade was annihilated, and in 
the succeeding year commenced the present comparatively 
vigorous colonization. Each year the number of colonists is 
increasing." 

The free white population must have largely increased, 
while the slave population, diminished by the annihilation of 
the slave trade, emancipation, etc., in equal, if not greater pro- 
portion. The aggregate population of Brazil must be more 
than 9,000,000, and of this, the slave population can scarcely 
reach 3,000,000 ; and unless some unforeseen and unfortu- 
nate change takes place, this disproportion between the free 
and slave population of the country will continue and 
speedily extinguish the latter. 



243 



GUIANA. 



British Guiana. — Slavery abolished in 1834. See British 
West Indies, page 247. 

Population, whites, 96,467; negroes, 14,251; Creoles, 7,682. 

French Guiana. — Slavery abolished in French Guiana, 
1848. See French West Indies, page 253. 

Population, 17,625. 

Dutch Guiana. — Slavery abolished by the Dutch in 1851, 
but as a compensation to the owners, the negroes were to 
work as apprentices till the year 1863. 

Population : whites, 12,000 ; negroes, 40,000. 

SLAVERY IN CANADA. 

On commencing this publication, we addressed a com- 
munication to a friend in Canada, requesting him to give 
such information as he might be able to obtain respecting the 
original status and extent of the institution of slavery in 
Canada, and its abolition, for publication in our pages. These 
inquiries, it appears, have brought out a very interesting his- 
torical sketch of slavery as it existed in Canada, and its abo- 
lition, in the Toronto Patriot, which we publish as a valuable 
historical record pertinent to our subject. We also publish 
a private communication on the same subject. 

R. Hadfield, Esq., of Buffalo, and other gentlemen in 
Canada, to whom we are indebted for this information, will 
please accept our thanks. 

The communications were received too late to have place 
in their regular geographical order. 

From the Toronto Patriot. 

" There are thousands of persons in Canada who would be insulted if told that 
there are points, connected with the history of this country, on which they are 
not well informed ; and who are scarcely conscious that slavery ever existed in 
Canada. If they know the general fact, they probably conclude rather that the 
slavery was permissible in Canada than that it ever existed here. They would 
be astounded if told that slavery existed in Canada for more than a century ; 
and yet such is the fact. The Montreal Historical Society, in two of its livraisons, 
has collected the principal documents which bear on Vesclavage en Canada. 



244 

"It was in the year of the English revolution, 1688, that the first steps were 
taken towards the introduction of slavery into Canada, Messieurs de Denon- 
ville, Governor, and de Champigny, Intendant of Canada, addressed the French 
Secretary of State on the desirability of introducing slavery into Canada. The 
scarcity and clearness of laborers and domestic servants were represented as so 
great as to ruin any one who undertook any enterprise. The best means of 
remedying this state of things was represented to be the introduction of negro 
slaves. Next year, 1689, the minister replied that His Majesty thought it 
would be well for the inhabitants of Canada to introduce negroes to cultivate 
the soil ; at the same time a fear was expressed that if negroes were brought 
from a climate so different they would perish, and the project would thus be 
found to be useless. Under the Coutume de Paris, negroes had been treated as 
chattels in the French West India islands; and it was decided, in 1105, that they 
were to be regarded in the same light in Canada. The non-slaveholding portion of 
the population, even at this early day, used to instill abolition ideas into the minds 
of the slaves; and frequently enticed them to leave their masters. On the 13th 
April, 1109, an ordinance, directed against this practice, was passed. This ordi- 
nance declared it to be the good pleasure of His Majesty that ' all Panis and 
Negroes who had been purchased, and who might in future be purchased, should 
be the property of those by whom they were purchased, as being their slaves/ 
Panis* — savages, we are told, thus named, whose nation is far from Canada — and 
negroes were forbidden to leave their masters, and whoever ' debauched ' them 
with ideas of liberty were made liable to a fine of fifty livres. Individual 
holders of slaves occasionally granted them their liberty; and on the 1st Sept., 
1136, an ordinance was passed laying down a form to be followed in such 
cases. In 1148, an arret of the Council of the King was passed at Quebec, 
declaring the exclusive property of His Majesty all slaves who escape from 
British to French territory. In 168G, a treaty had been concluded at London, 
between England and France, in which, among other things, it was stipulated 
that the subjects of each country, in America, should not entice away the slaves 
belonging to the subjects of the other. This was three or four years before 
slaves were introduced into Canada ; but they existed in the French West 
Indies and the British colonies on the main land. In the capitulation of Mon- 
treal, 1160, it was provided ' that the negroes and Panis of both sexes should 
remain in their quality of slaves, in possession of the French and Canadians to 
whom they belonged;' and their owners were to be ' free to keep them in their 
service in the colony or to sell them.' They might also continue to bring them 
up in the Roman Catholic religion. 

"Wherever slavery exists there will be desertions ; and even in these early 
times, persons were willing to facilitate such escapes. In 1132, a French cap- 
tain, Le Sieur Joanne, brought to Canada a slave whom he had engaged as a 
sailor ; and while the vessel was there the slave escaped. He was found after 
a while in the parish of St. Augustin, where he was demanded ; but we are 



* Panis is the generic name for all Indians or half-breed Indian slaves— not for any dis- 
tinct tribe or nation. 



245 

told in an ordinance of Intendant Hocquart, February 8, 1*734, 'that some 
evil disposed persons facilitated the escape of the said slave.' The captain applied 
to the government, who issued an order for the arrest of the fugitive, wherever he 
might be ; all militia officers were ordered to assist in the arrest, and an arbi- 
trary fine was denounced against whoever should facilitate his escape or conceal 
him. The spirit of revenge sometimes fired the breasts of Canadian slaves. A 
negress, the slave of Madame Francheville, who had been purchased in one of 
the neighboring English colonies, set fire to her mistress' house, on the 11th of 
April, 1134 ; by which a part of the town of Montreal was burnt, and for 
which the slave was hanged. 

" At least one Canadian newspaper, which still exists, used to contain adver- 
tisements of slaves for sale ; very similar to advertisements which may now be 
any day read in the journals of the Southern States. The Quebec Gazette, 
of March 18, 1784, contained, among its advertisements, this notice : ' For 
sale. A negress, now in town. For price, address Madame Perrault.' And 
in the number of March 25, of the same year : ' For sale. A negro about 
twenty-five years of age, who has had the smallpox ;' and who was, therefore, 
in future, safe from that disease. ' For full particulars inquire of the printer.' 
Negroes taken in battle, after the conquest of Canada, were not treated as 
prisoners of war, but were taken to Montreal and sold. There is a deposition 
to this effect, dated July 16, 1188. 

" As the French law had given a monopoly of the slave trade in the French 
colonies to French vessels, an act of the British Parliament was passed in 1190, 
by which it was provided that ' subjects of the United States ' might remove 
to Canada, and import their negroes with them in British vessels. 

" One of the first uses that Upper Canada made of the legislative powers 
conferred on it in 1791, was to put an end to the importation of slaves ; to 
provide that all the children of slaves thereafter born in the province should be 
entitled to their freedom at the age of twenty-five years, and that no person 
should be bound to service for a longer term than nine years. The slaves then 
in the province were not liberated, but continued in their servile condition to 
the end of their lives. This was in 1193, two years after the passing of the 
Constitution Act. At one stroke the slave-trade was arrested, so far as 
Upper Canada was concerned, and slavery gradually abolished, without com- 
pensation to the masters, who must have been very few in number. Long 
after it was the boast of England that a slave became free as soon as he set 
foot on English soil, slavery continued in some of the colonies ; and even a 
slave who obtained his freedom by being taken to England, suffered a reinte- 
gration of his servile condition if taken to one of the slave colonies of the 
empire. This reproach did not attach to Upper Canada. It was not till 1807 
that the Imperial Parliament abolished the slave-trade, so far as it had power 
to do so ; for the prohibition could of course only extend to British subjects. 

" Upper Canada prohibited the importation of slaves long before any nation 
had abandoned the slave-trade. In 1193, a bill was introduced into the Legis- 
lature of Lower Canada, ' tending to the abolition of slavery ;' but the result 
was that it was 'laid on the table.' In 1198, a negress called Charlotte, 



246 

belonging to Miss Jane Cook, deserted ; and being brought before a magis- 
trate, was committed to prison ; but she was set at liberty, on a writ of habeas 
corpus, by the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. Another negress, 
being imprisoned for the same cause, was set at liberty by the Chief Justice. 
The peculiarity, in this case, seemed to be that she had been purchased in 
Albany by a person living in Montreal, named Elias Smith, instead of being 
brought in as part of settlers' effects. Montreal rose against these decisions ; 
and petitioned the Legislature to pass a fugitive slave law, or in default of 
that, to follow out its inclination, and abolish slavery in the Province. As 
late as the year 1800, 'divers inhabitants of the district of Montreal' peti- 
tioned the Legislature ' to pass an act, declaring that slavery exists under cer- 
tain conditions, in this Province, and investing perfectly in the masters the 
property of their negroes ; and moreover, that the House pass such laws and 
regulations for the government of slaves as in its wisdom it shall see fit.' On 
motion of M. Papineau, the elder, this petition was referred to a committee of 
five, who reported that, in their opinion, there ' existed reasonable grounds for 
passing a law to regulate the condition of slaves, to limit the term of slavery, 
and to prevent the introduction of slaves into the Province.' Mr. Cuthbert, a 
member of the committee, accordingly introduced such a bill. In 1800 and in 
1801, this bill was before the House ; but we hear nothing of it after it got 
into committee of the whole. In 1803, the same member introduced a bill ' to 
remove all doubt concerning slavery in this Province, and for other purposes ;' 
but it was sent to a special committee, and we hear no more of it. Several 
suite were brought in the courts of Lower Canada, arising out of questions of 
property in slaves. Slavery was legal in Lower Canada till abolished by the 
Imperial Act, in 1834." 

"Toronto, 15th March, 1861. 

" My dear Sir : 

"In reply to your questions relating to slavery in 
Canada, I beg to say that up to July, 1793, slavery existed 
in Upper Canada in the same way as in other British colonies, 
but not to any very great extent. In that year an act was 
passed by the Provincial Legislature, prohibiting the further 
introduction of slaves, and providing that every child born 
of slave parents after the passing of the act should be main- 
tained by the owner of the parents till the child attained the 
age of 25 years, and that it was then entitled to freedom. 
And the birth of all children born of slave parents after that 
date, was required to be registered by the owner under a 
penalty in case of neglect. Persons are now living in 
Toronto who held slaves when the above act was passed. 
Several wills have passed through my hand, in examining 



247 

titles, by which slaves are manumitted. The law on the 
subject in Canada at present is the same as the law of England. 

" Yours sincerely." 

This completes the history of the decline of commercial 
slavery in the Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and 
Dutch possessions on the American continent. 



DECLINE OF COMMERCIAL SLAVERY IN THE WEST 
INDIA ISLANDS. 

BRITISH WEST INDIES. 

In 1833, it was enacted in the British Parliament that 
slavery should cease in all the British colonies on and after 
August 1st, 1834. 

The following is a table of the slave colonies, with the 
number of slaves registered as belonging to each : 

Number of slaves. 

Bermuda . 4,905 

Bahamas 9,705 

Jamaica 311,692 

Honduras . . . ... . . . 1,920 

Yirgin Isles 5,192 

Antigua 29,537 

Montserrat . . 6,355 

Nevis 8,722 

St. Christopher . 20,660 

Dominica . . 14,384 

Barbadoes . . . . . . . . 82,807 

Grenada 23,536 

St. Yincent 22,997 

Tobago 11,621 

St. Lucia 13,348 

Trinidad 22,359 

British Guiana, on the mainland 84,915 

Cape of Good Hope (Africa) 38,427 

Mauritius 68,615 



781,697 



In the bill of emancipation, it was provided that the slaves 
should labor as apprentices till 1840, when they were to be 



248 

set at liberty. But a cry was raised against the duration of 
the apprenticeship, and the term was reduced to 1838, when 
the blacks became universally fre.e. 

The government appropriated £20,000,000, which gave 
an average of about $127 for each slave, as a remunera- 
tion to the owners. 

This action on the part of the British government in abo- 
lishing negro slavery in her colonies, by which 781,697 
negro slaves were liberated, is one of the most prominent 
events that mark the decline of commercial slavery in Ame- 
rica. For nearly fifty years, fanatics and humanitarians had 
agitated the subject on the score of humanity, and for the 
same period, political economists had done the same thing on 
the score of economy. 

English statesmen succeeded in figuring it out at last to 
their satisfaction, that it would be better for English interests, 
and worse for the interests of other countries, more particu- 
larly the United States, if the English colonies changed their 
system of slave labor to that of free labor. And so the deed 
was done under the auspices of humanity and philanthropy; 
but the measures of the English government were imperfect 
and hasty ; hence, the immediate result was serious ill to the 
blacks themselves, and very great damage to the material 
interests of the colonies and of England. The industrial 
and social status of masses of negro slaves cannot be suddenly 
changed without injury to all concerned. They must pass 
through the transition state. 

A decided change for the better, it is said, has recently 
commenced in the British West India islands, especially 
Jamaica. 

Pending the writing of the foregoing, the following came 
to our notice : 

SLAVERY COOLIE LABOR, 

From the London Times, March 1. 

The. public sentiment upon the subject of slavery and the slave trade seems at last 
to have entered upon its rational, and, as we may hope, its permanent state. A 
hundred and fifty years ago, we were fighting for the privilege of conveying negroes 
over sea. Having obtained all we desired on that score, we then apathetically 



249 

pocketed the profits, and positively refused to thinli of how those profits were obtained. 
A generation later, and we grew uncomfortable in our gains, and our ears tingled 
and our consciences grew uneasy as the wails and groans of the stifled negroes came 
home to us with perpetual and importunate repetition. We were some years 
awakening, and Wilberforce and Clarkson, and all the fellow-laborers of these 
men, had much to do thoroughly to arouse us out of that uneasy state of som- 
nolence. But at last we did awake, and we awoke in a frenzy. The state of 
this country, when the full guilt of slavery came upon it, was nothing less than a 
frenzy of remorse. Before that passion everything went down. Many men yet 
living can remember when George Canning failed to obtain, as a concession, the 
abolition of the power to flog female slaves, and young men can remember when 
it was thought little less than blasphemy to suggest that even a black man 
might very reasonably be expected to do some labor. Between these two 
extremes the public sentiment has violently vibrated. In the paroxysm of the 
first remorse, the guilty Englishman saw slavery in everything black. The phantom 
of that complaining negro ivas ever before him", and he would shut his eyes and 
scream if you did but talk to him of a negro at work. He sacrificed everything to 
his sore, quivering conscience. He was ever upon the watch to find out something 
more to sacrifice. He sacrificed his great West Indian interest not only reck- 
lessly, but with an ostentatious eagerness. He cast his own twenty millions 
down to rid himself of the remaining evidences of his crime as penitently as 
Judas offered the thirty pieces of silver to the Jewish authorities. He poured 
forth not only his own money and the money of those over whom he held 
influence, but he lavished the life of his own kith and kin to appease that 
accusing conscience. On the coast of Africa, in the perfidious sunshine of ' the 
white man's grave/ amid the beautiful and deadly luxuriance of a tropical vege- 
tation, he placed his own countrymen to pine and die that he might comfort 
himself with the satisfaction that he had atoned for the great sin he had com- 
mitted against the black man. For a full generation there was nothing he 
would not pay, and nothing he would not vicariously endure. 

" Every great excitement has its recoil. The generation of crime has been fol- 
lowed by the generation of remorse ; the generation of remorse is followed by the 
generation of reflection. We who now occupy the earth are less affected by the 
crimes of grandfathers or the remorse of our fathers. We begin to feel less affright 
at this spectre of the writhing negro. We have purged ourselves completely of the 
guilt of his abduction and his other wrongs, and we can feel ourselves entitled to look 
upon any other man who has succeeded to the common obligation of eating bread by 
the sweat of his brow. The flood tide, which had flowed upward, roaring and 
foaming like the ' bore ' of some bell-shaped firth, retained its power of flowing 
after the great impulse had ceased; but years ago there were some who ven- 
tured to say that, after all, the earth must be tilled, and that the great law of 
nature which doomed man to labor must apply to the black man as well as to 
the white. Their voices, however, had little chance of being heard, for there 
was enough of vehemence in our old convictions to urge us not only to persuade 
but to coerce all the rest of the world to feel as we felt and to be penitent as 



250 

we were penitent. We lavished our money, we concentrated our efforts, we 
exerted all our influence, we compromised our political relations, we coerced the 
weak, and we went to the verge of making wav upon the strong, in order to 
bring the rest of the world to join with us in our crusade against the traffic in 
mankind. Never was there in the history of our race so magnificent and so 
disinterested an enthusiasm. When the great book of history shall become so 
vast that far-off generations shall be unable to seize any other than the tallest 
events in the great vista from which they emerge, this work of England must 
stand out and challenge admiration, as something to which the story of past 
ages has no parallel. We English alone have been hearty in the cause. We 
have shamed some by our example, we have bought others by our largesses, 
and we have deterred others by our power; but of all the peoples of the earth, 
we alone have labored, with gold and with arms, for no other object than for 
that point of conscience which is to us our ' idea ' — to put down slavery and the 
slave trade. Yet we have not succeeded. While we have been starving our 
own colonists, and suffering our West Indian possessions to return to jungle in 
very fanaticism, suspecting that slavery must lurk under every contract for 
labor, other countries have eluded their engagements, or have openly resented 
our interference. Portugal has required all our attention to keep her at all up 
to the mark ; Spain has impudently repudiated all her promises ; France has 
changed the name, but not the substance; and America has continued the 
odious traffic at sea under the pretext of a jealousy of her national honor, and 
has, to her misfortune, nursed slavery at home and acknowledged it as a 
domestic institution. After all our sacrifices and all our efforts, the most zealous 
opponents of slavery were fain to come down to the House of Commons on 
Tuesday night, and to propose a resolution, ' That the means hitherto employed 
by this country for the suppression of the African slave trade have failed to 
accomplish that object.' 

" Now that we can calmly review all that has been done, we find that we 
have been led away by our generous impulses and have wasted our strength 
uselessly. Like the charge at Balaklava, ' Cest magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la 
guerre/ it was wonderful, but it was altogether unpracticable. Great as we 
are, we are not powerful enough to coerce the world. Strong as we are, we must 
submit to the laws which universally influence human conduct. After all our vain 
efforts we are reduced at last to admit that we must be content to attract mankind by 
their interests, and not pretend to govern them by fear. France claps her hand 
upon her sword if we presume to ask whether she has slaves or free laborers in 
the hold of the Charles-et-G-eorges. Spain laughs at us if we pretend to pre- 
vent her from importing as many slaves as she may want in Cuba. America 
threatens war if we attempt to liberate the live cargo of a vessel covered with 
the stars and stripes. We have discovered at last that commercial competition will 
do what fleets and armies are utterly incompetent to perform. Not very long ago, 
when we, from time to time, urged the claims of our West Indian colonies to 
some substituted free labor for the slave* labor they had lost, we were met by 
the indignation of our anti-slavery societies. Perhaps there are some remnants 



251 

of that superstition, which is a great religion degenerated, wherein the same 
dogmas are still repeated ; but on Tuesday night the modern anti-slavery men 
came down to ask the House of Commons to believe that ' the true remedy is 
to be found, not in countenancing immigration into countries were slavery exists, 
but in augmenting the working population in countries in which slavery has 
been abolished ;' and ' that the failure has mainly arisen from our having 
endeavored almost exclusively to prevent the supply of slaves instead of to 
check the demand for them.' At last we are condescending to reason upon slavery 
and the slave trade as we reason upon other human affairs. At last we are coming 
down from our high notions of destroying anything we do not like by the sword and 
the cannon-shot — although there are some fanatics, as the debate showed, who still 
lean upon these means — and are intent upon humbling ourselves to the commonplace 
notion that the best way of destroying an objectionable system of labor is to undersell 
it. Africa, populous as it is, is not so populous as China, nor is it so populous 
as the coast of India. Africa, necessitous as the people may be, is not so 
necessitous as the Far East. There we have a hungry civilization which may 
be molded to our purposes by good treatment more cheaply than the savagery 
of Africa can be oppressed by coercion. Both in India and in China we have 
the materials for a competition which may render the slave trade an extinct, 
because an unprofitable, traffic. The old anti-slavery party will probably for 
some time still oppose all white emigration, unless it should compel their free 
black proteges to work by the competition that emigration must create in the 
labor market; but we are happily getting beyond this stage of folly, and are 
learning to look upon this subject with the eyes of common sense. We have a 
treaty with China which enables us to carry to the West not only Chinamen but 
their families. We have behaved so well to them that we have gained their confi- 
dence. While other nations may kidnap them by tens, we can obtain volunteers by 
thousands ; and if our laws are observed, and, cur shipowners and planters are 
honest, we are not far from the period when we may see the prosperity of our West 
India colonies restored, and the slave trade extinguished without a cruiser or a fort 
on the coast of Africa, and without the sacrifice of even another million from the 
British treasury. P 

There are some remarkable points in the preceding article 
from the London Times. Its confession and self-abasement 
for the national sin of slavery, is perfectly just and proper. 
There are several other confessions and acknowledgments par- 
ticularly pertinent to our facts and line of argument. For 
example : " Great as we are, we are not powerful enough to 
coerce the world. Strong as we are, we must submit to the 
laws which universally influence human conduct." The true 
interpretation of this, we believe, is : Almighty as we con- 
sider ourselves, we have made a slight mistake in our aboli- 



252 

tion policy, and now we had better be regulated by the laws 
of God. 

We accord with the entire article, except in that high- 
wrought picture of national frenzy arising from remorse for 
the sins of a past generation, and the attempt to clothe the 
present with a very gaudy robe of self-righteousness. We 
consider all that a very pretty piece of romance, thrown in 
by the romantic writer to relieve the dark picture. 

But impartial, matter-of-fact history must exhibit the 
policy of England in abolishing slavery and the slave trade, 
as a mixture of one-third fanaticism, and two-thirds pure 
selfishness. When the English abolished slavery, does any 
one believe they ever dreamed that the act would starve the 
colonists and cause their " West India possession to return to 
jungle?' 7 to use the expression of the "London Times." 
No ; the English thought their own fair possessions would 
bloom and prosper with free negroes, while those of others, 
remaining under slavery, would return to jungle. In all this 
matter, the fanatics worked upon the disposition of English 
statesmen to leave no means untried to prevent the extension 
of American interest and influence. From 1783, to within 
ten years, this feeling of jealousy on the part of England 
has ever been prominent in English councils. The idea 
that in abolishing the slave trade and liberating the negro 
slaves in her West India colonies, American interests would 
receive a heavy blow, was the deepest and strongest motive 
England had for so doing. It was but the reflex of the 
idea entertained by the French Jacobin convention of 1794, 
of the effect the liberation of the negro slaves in the French 
West India colonies, would have on England. 

We are surprised that in this enlightened age, any sound 
writer should so naively assert that any generation of 
Englishmen was ever aroused to a frenzy of remorse for 
the crimes of the previous generation. The toughness of 
national consciences is too well understood in these, days, 
to admit of any such millennial idea. While we fully appre- 
ciate the several noble qualities found in the English character, 



253 

we are among those who doubt whether the phantom of a 
negro ever troubled the digestion or the slumbers of English- 
men, individually or collectively. 

FRENCH WEST INDIES. 

" Lango7is la liberte dans les colonies ; c'est aujouroVhui que 
V anglais est mort /" thundered forth Danton in the French 
convention of 1794. The Jacobin agitation of the idea of 
thrusting liberty into the blacks of the French colonies, in 
1794 — equivalent to the abolitionism of our day — caused the 
blacks in the French island of St. Domingo to thrust the 
knife into the whites, their masters. At that period there 
were more negro slaves in the French than in. the English 
colonies, and such were the peculiar relations then existing 
between France and England, and their relative positions, 
that the Jacobin idea of giving immediate freedom to negro 
slaves in the French colonies, was based mainly on the 
opinion that the eclat of the act, the stronger hold it would 
give France upon her colonies, and the uprising it would 
cause among the negro slaves in the British colonies, was 
destined to prove the final blow under which the power of 
England would succumb to that of France. This policy of 
the Jacobins was murderous rather than humane, and in the 
terrible St. Domingo massacre, they were speedily paid back 
in coin upon which they did not count. 

The French convention of 1794 proclaimed the liberty of 
the blacks in the French colonies, but as soon as Napoleon 
came into power, he annulled this proclamation and caused 
the blacks to be retained as slaves. 

We have already narrated how France abolished the slave 
trade in 1819. 

In 1840 the subject of emancipation in the French colonies 
was again vigorously agitated. At this time, France had lost 
her most valuable West India possession, St. Domingo, with 
other smaller islands ; and the negro slaves in her colonies 
were reduced from nearly 1,000,000 to 250,000. In 1840, 
the French government (Louis Philippe) appointed a commis- 



254 

sion to inquire into the expediency of abolishing slavery in 
the colonies, and in 1843, this commission, at the head of 
which was the Due de Broglie, brought forth a report of im- 
mense volume. It covered 3,450 pages, and contained a vast 
array of information on the expediency of emancipation. 

Here the matter rested until March 4th, 1848, when the 
Provisional Government of the French Republic decreed, that a 
commission should be instituted by the Provisionary Ministry 
of Marine, to prepare, in the shortest time possible, an act of 
immediate emancipation in all the colonies of the republic. 

On the 27th April, 1848, the Provisional Government pro- 
mulgated the decree of emancipation. It commenced with 
the following preamble : 

11 Considering that slavery is a crime against humanity ; that in destroying 
the free will of man, the natural principle of right and justice is suppressed ; 
that it is a flagrant violation of the republican dogma of liberty, equality, and 
fraternity." 

The decree then says : 

" Art. 1. Slavery shall be abolished in all the colonies of French possessions, 
two months after the promulgation of this decree in each of them. 

" The apprenticeship system in Senegal is abolished. 

M The buying and selling of slaves is positively and absolutely interdicted. 

" Art. 5. The National Assembly shall regulate the quota of indemnity due 
to each of the colonies. 

" Art. 6. Colonies purified of slavery shall be represented in the National 
Assembly." 

The National Assembly promulgated the law of indemnity 
January, 1849. 

According to this law, the sum of 6,000,000 francs was 
decreed to be paid to the colonies pro rata, in money, thirty 
days after its promulgation. Also, the sum of 6,000,000 
francs in stock, bearing five per cent, interest, to be divided 
among the colonies pro rata. 

The amount of 12,000,000, half cash, and half five per cent, 
stock, was allotted to the colonies in the following proportions, 
according to the number of slaves liberated in each, under the 
decree : 



255 





Francs. 


Negroes liberated.* 


Martinique . 


. 3,015,771.60 


60,255 


Guadaloupe and dependencies . - . 


. 3,894,329.70 


77,886 


Guiana (on the main) 


745,143.76 


14,902 


La Reunion (Isle of Bourbon) 


. 4,110,400.50 


82,208 


Senegal and dependencies (Africa) . 


211,007.32 


4,220 


Nossebe and St. Marie (Africa) 


23,347.12 


466 




12,000,000.00 


239,937 



Thus 239,937 negro slaves were liberated, and slavery was 
abolished in all the French colonies. 



DANISH ISLANDS. 

Christian Till., King of Denmark, in the year 1847, 
enacted certain laws for the complete emancipation of all the 
slaves in the Danish islands of St. Thomas, Santa Cruz, and 
St. Johns. 

From the 28th of July of that year, it was ordered that all 
children born of those held in bondage should be free ; and 
also that at the end of twelve years, slavery should entirely 
cease. 

The next year, 1848, the slaves in Santa Cruz broke out 
in insurrection, under the pressure of which the Governor- 
General issued a proclamation, in which slavery was imme- 
diately abolished, and the negroes declared free. 



SWEDISH ISLAND. 

Emancipation was proclaimed on the small island of St. 
Bartholomew, October 9th, 1847. 



* We have not been able to obtain the exact number of slaves liberated by the 
French decree of emancipation. This table is based on the fact that 500 francs or one 
hundred dollars was the amount allowed for each slave liberated. The figures must be 
very nearly accurate. 



256 



HAYTI, OR ST. DOMINGO. 



The French part of St. Domingo proclaimed its indepen- 
dence in 1800, and in 1803 the French were expelled, and it 
is now a republic of free negroes. 

The Spanish part of the island is also a republic, with 
president, legislature, assembly and council. Slavery is 
extinct. 



SPANISH ISLANDS — CUBA. 

The island of Cuba is the only place on earth where the 
commercial slave-trade exists. Tolerated by the authorities 
of the island, winked at by the government of Spain, the 
trade flourishes, half clandestinely, though not to so great an 
extent as in former years. 

The number of Africans landed in Cuba yearly cannot be 
stated with accuracy, but it is said to be between six and ten 
thousand. The Spanish government has recently made known 
its intention to station a fleet on the African coast, and use 
its best endeavors to suppress the trade. Whether Spain is 
sincere in these expressed intentions, remains to be seen. 

The importation of coolies from China, to labor as appren- 
tices, has been resorted to recently in Cuba, and it is said 
with satisfactory results. The apprenticeship system is de- 
nounced in certain quarters, as no better than slavery. We 
do not consider the discussion of this point pertinent to our 
subject. 

The sudden failure of industry in the British West India 
colonies, by reason of abolition, created at once an enlarged 
demand for slave labor in Cuba, principally to cultivate the 
sugar-cane. The effect in Louisiana was the same ; hence, 
the strong hold slavery now has in one or more localities, can 
be traced directly, in part, to the hasty and injudicious man- 
ner in which England abolished slavery in her colonies. 



257 



The population of Cuba was, in 






Whites. Free Blacks. 


Slayeu. 


TotaL 


1775.... 




170,370 


1817.... 




551,998 


1854.... 501,988 176,647 


330,425 .. 


.. 1,009,060 



Except in the importation of coolies, the increase of free 
blacks and the expressed intention of the Spanish government 
to suppress the slave-trade, there are no indications of a 
weakening of the system of slave labor in the island of 
Cuba. But we* may have evidence of a change in this 
respect at an early day. 

PORTO RICO. 

The island of Porto Rico is owned by Spain, and governed 
by a Captain-General. It is 100 miles long by 35 to 40 
wide. The staple product of the island is sugar. Tobacco 
is raised in small quantities ; also cotton of the best quality. 
The exports are $8,000,000 per annum. 

The facts relating to slavery on this island are interesting. 

The slave-trade was abolished by Spain in 1822, and the 
contraband trade with this island has ceased. Xo slaves have 
been landed on the island for some years. In 1859 an 
attempt was made to land a cargo of negroes, but, through the 
watchfulness and activity of the authorities, the parties were 
detected and arrested; and they are" now suffering the penalty. 

According to the law, a slave in Porto Rico can go before 
a judge, appointed for the purpose, obtain his appraisement,, 
and purchase his freedom at the rate thus fixed. 

Four years ago, Pezuela, the Captain-General, started the 
project of freeing one slave per annum from a certain fund of 
the church. This was done with the idea that it would form 
the basis of a plan of general emancipation. This shows the 
animus. 

The comfort and safety of the slaves are guarded by law. 
They can complain of maltreatment, on the part of their 



258 

masters, to a special judge, and, on conviction, the master is 
fined or imprisoned. 

The entire population of the island is estimated at 500,000. 
Of this number ten per cent., or 50,000 are slaves, and 
125,000 are free blacks. 

The free blacks are, as a class, orderly, and to a certain 
extent, industrious. Some of the sugar haciendas are worked 
entirely with free blacks ; others by slaves and free blacks 
together, and the balance by slaves entirely. 

The number of slaves is gradually diminishing. The 
planters generally have come to the conclusion that slave 
labor is dearer than free labor, and, under this belief, the 
laws and public opinion are favoring the emancipation of the 
blacks. 

DECLINE OF COMMERCIAL SLAVERY IN THE UNITED 
STATES OF NORTH AMERICA. 

In speaking of the decline of commercial slavery in what 
have been known as the United States, we use the compara- 
tive term. In the more rapid increase of free territory, the 
greater increase of free population and the products of free 
labor, we recognize the inevitable law of progress before 
which the institution of slavery is surely and rapidly declin- 
ing, and will soon disappear. 

When the Federal Constitution was framed and adopted in 
1787, the following relative proportion of free and slave ter- 
ritory existed in the original States : 

Square Miles. 

Free: Massachusetts, including the territory of Maine, . 42,800 
Slave: Twelve States, 326,691 

The gain of slave territory upon this basis has been as 
follows : 



259 



Kentucky, 

Tennessee, 

Louisiana, 

Mississippi, 

Missouri, 

Alabama, 

Arkansas, 

Florida, 

Texas, . 



Indian Territory, 

Total gain slave territory, 



oitted into the Union. 


Square Miles 


. 1792 


37,680 


. 1796 


44,000 


. 1811 


41,346 


. 1811 


47,151 


. 1821 


65,037 


. 1820 


50,722 


. 1836 


52,198 


. 1836 


59,268 


. 1845 


274,000 



671,402 
71,127 

742,529 



The gain of free territory, upon the same basis, has been 
as follows : 



States. 




Admitted into the Union. 


Square Miles. 


New Hampshire, . 


8,030 


Connecticut, . 








4,750 


Rhode Island, 








1,200 


Vermont, 






1790 


8,000 


New Jersey, . 








6,851 


New York, . 








46,000 


Pennsylvania, 








47,000 


Ohio, . 






1802 


39,964 


Indiana, 






1816 


33,809 


Illinois, 






1818 


55,409 


Michigan, 






1836 


56,243 


Iowa, . 






1846 


50,914 


Wisconsin, . 






1848 


53,924 


California, 






. 1850 


160,000 


Minnesota, . 






. 1858 


86,000 


Oregon, 






. 1858 


185,000 


Kansas, 






1861 


125,283 


Territories. 










Nebraska, 








335,882 


Dakotah, 








60,000 


Utah, . 








269,170 


Washington, 








123,022 


New Mexico, 








256,309 


Arizona, 








80,000 
2,092,560 



260 



RECAPITULATION. 

Square Miles. 

Original free territory, . . . ' . . 42,800 

Gain, 2,092,560 



Total free territory, 1860, . . 2,135,360 

Original slave territory, 326,691 

Gain, ........ 611,402 



998,093 
Deduct loss from original slave territory, six States, 123,081 



Total slave territory, 1860, . . . 815,012 

Free territory, 2,135,360 

Slave territory, 815,012 



Total gain free territory, . . . 1,260,348 

Thus we find the gain of free over slave territory, since 
the formation of the Federal compact, is 1,260,348 square 
miles. 

During this period, the free States have increased from one 
to nineteen, while the slave States have lost six and gained 
nine, making a net gain of only three, which, added to the 
original twelve, makes fifteen slave States against nineteen 
free States; leaving nearly a million of square miles of free 
territory out of which to make free States. 

The census of 1860 gives 27,649,535 free population, and 
3,999,353 slaves, which is one slave to seven free, a gain of 
free population over slave population, since 1790, of more than 
sixty per cent. The increase of slave population during the 
last decade has been but little over twenty per cent., the 
lowest rate of increase since the formation of the govern- 
ment. 

The following is a statement showing the absolute free and 
slave populations in the slave States at the last three enume- 
rations : 



261 





Free Population. 


Slave Population. 


States. 


1840. 


1850. 


I860. 


1840. 


1850. 


I860. 


Delaware. 


75,480 


89,242 110,548 


2,605 


2,290 


1,805 


Maryland 


380,282 


492,666 646,583 


89,737 


90,386 


85,382 


Virginia 


790,710 


949,133 1,097,373 


449,087 


472,528 


495,826 


N. Carolina 


507,601 


580,491 


679,965 


245,817 


288,548 


328,377 


S. Carolina 


267,360 


283,523 


308,186 


327,038 


384,984 


407,185 


Georgia 


410,448 


524,503 


615,336 


280,944 


381,682 


467,461 


Florida 


28,760 


48,135 


81,885 


25,717 


39,310 


63,809 


Alabama 


337,224 


428,779 


520,444 


253,352 


342,844 


435,473 


Mississippi 


180,440 


296,648 


407,551 


195,211 


309,878 


479,607 


Louisiana 


183,959 


272,953 


354,245 


168,452 


244,809 


312,186 


Texas 




154,431 


415.999 




58,167 


184,956 


Arkansas 


77,639 


163,797 


331,710 


19,935 


47,100 


109,065 


Missouri. 


32~>,462 


594,622 


1,085,590 


58,240 


87,422 


115,619 


Kentucky 


597,520 


771,424 


920,077 


182,258 


210,981 


225,490 


Tennessee 

Total 


646,151 


763,258 


859,528 


183,059 


239,459 


287,112 


4,809,097 


6,412,605 8,435,020 


2,481,622 


3,200,364 


3,999,353 



In 1790, the products of the country were almost entirely 
the result of slave labor, and the exports were principally 
from the Southern States, and these did not reach $5,000,000 
per annum. 

In 1850, the annual value of manufactures in the free 
States was $842,586,058, and the annual value of manufac- 
tures in the slave States was $165,413,027. 

In 1855, the commercial exchanges of the United States 
(imports and exports) were $536,435,719, of . which 
$404,368,503 belonged to the free States, and $132,067,216 
to the slave States. 

We find these facts in a book known as " Helper's Impending 
Crisis,'' 1 got up and used to frighten the people of the North 
into the belief that it was necessary for the Abolition party 
to obtain the control of the Federal Government, and make 
war upon the South, in order to arrest the progress of the 
institution of slavery. We believe no one will deny the im- 
portant part this book has played in sustaining, the " irre- 
pressible conflict," and stimulating sectional strife. 

Now we take this book (granting that its statistics are 



262 

correct) as the strongest possible evidence that slavery has 
been declining since the Federal Union was formed — that the 
institution is doomed to disappear in the regular order o»f 
nature at no very distant day. We use this book to prove 
precisely what the Republican demagogues, in their mangling 
of the subject, have attempted to disprove. According to 
the statistics of Helper's book, the free States have been 
gaining on the slave States from the outset, in territory, 
population, manufactures, products, arts, sciences — every- 
thing that constitutes national greatness ; and all this, 
according to its own account, under the statesmen and 
statesmanship of that same South which it so violently and 
so atrociously abuses. 

From 1828 to 1833, a disposition was manifested in Dela- 
ware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, to adopt measures 
for the abolition of slavery within their limits. But most 
unfortunately, a species of rabid fanaticism, known in these 
days as abolition, made its appearance in our midst, and by 
its unreasonable demands, its bitter invective, sweeping de- 
nunciation, and unnatural, unconstitutional tendencies, raised 
such a general and determined opposition on the part of the 
South, that all hope of any immediate movement tending to 
emancipation in any of the slave States was speedily extin- 
guished. In this abolition movement we see the beginning 
of that treason which has dissevered the Confederacy. 

It can be said, however, that slavery in the State of Dela- 
ware has steadily declined, and is now nearly extinct. In 
1790, this State had 8,887 slaves. In 1850, but 2290 ; and 
the census of 1860 gives only 1,805. 

Slavery in Maryland is also gradually becoming extinct. 
In 1790, the slave population numbered 103,036. The 
census of 1860 gives 85,382 slaves, to 646,583 whites. 

Western Yirginia — the mountainous region is gradually 
ridding itself of the negro, and manifesting decided free soil 
proclivities. When the State of Virginia — the proud Old 
Dominion — the mother of Presidents, wakes up to the fact 
that something more honorable and profitable awaits her 



263 

than a decaying existence as the mother of negroes — the 
Africa of the slave States — she will shake off the incubus, and 
stand forth in all the glory to which she is entitled from 
ancient and noble associations. 

In Missouri, slavery is also on the decline. The proportion 
of slaves to the whites is less in this State than that of any- 
other State except Delaware. 

The city of St. Louis, the empire city of the West, is already 
a free city. 

In Texas, slavery has but a feeble existence, except in 
what is called Eastern Texas, constituting scarcely one- 
quarter of the State. Texas looks large, very large, on the 
map, but of the 274,000 square miles it contains, at least 
100,000, or more than one-third, is a desert, where neither 
white nor blacks can live. The entire country west of the 
100th meridian, is a dreary waste (except immediately on the 
Rio Grande), that never will be settled. 

South of the River Colorado, and east of the 100th 
meridian, constituting what is known as Western Texas, 
would be free to-day if separated from Eastern Texas. The 
fear that this extensive region would be eventually converted 
into slave states, which convulsed the North when Texas was 
admitted into the Union, will never be realized. 

In view of these great and important facts, it became 
apparent, that the Almighty was working out the abolition 
of slavery in his own good time and manner, and somewhat 
too rapidly for the special designs of certain abolition fana- 
tics and selfish politicians, whose life-long struggle for spoils 
and power was likely to end in grief, if political success 
should not be speedily attained. It became necessary, there- 
fore, to forestall the Almighty. To this end, a political con- 
vention was held in the city of Pittsburg, August, 1856, to 
organize a party whose object should be to act on the defen- 
sive against the South, to resist the aggressions, the extension 
of slavery, to prevent the slaveholding interest from obtain- 
ing permanent control of the Federal Government ! 



264 

This convention gave birth to the republican party — a 
party which a Clay, a Webster, or other statesmen of past 
days, and whom it was necessary to kill off before such a 
party could be created — would have scorned. 

There is no denying the fact, that the republican party 
of 1856, comprehends the free soil party of 1848, and the 
liberty party of 1844, all having their common foundation 
far back in original abolitionism, under the auspices of which, 
what may be termed venom distilleries were established, in 
the shape of abolition societies, abolition journals, abolition 
tracts, abolition lectures, abolition sermons, etc., and which 
for more than thirty years, distilled their poison into the 
public mind in one unceasing drip. 

On the 25th of October, 1858, the acknowledged creator 
and leader of the republican party, ¥m. H. Seward, stood 
up before the people of the North, and declared the principles 
and purposes of the party, as follows : 

"It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it 
means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either 
entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cot- 
ton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana 
will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become 
marts for legitimate merchandise alone; or else the rye fields and wheat fields 
of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers 
to slave culture, and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York 
become once more the markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men." 

Based upon such infidel notions as these — such an utter want 
of faith in the overruling power of divine Providence and the 
progress of humanity — abolition, under the name of republi- 
canism, drew a large body of the most respectable and well- 
meaning people of the North, into the belief that the freedom 
of their own soil, and the salvation of the Federal Govern- 
ment, depended on the success of the republican party in. 
1860. Upon this unnatural, false issue, abolition — livid 
abolition — achieved success, and is now enthroned in Wash- 
ington. 



265 

It was these views, and the fear of abolition success, that 
caused us to remark, in Mexican Papers, No. 3, Sept. 15, 
1860, page 128, as follows : 

"The 'irrepressible conflict' leaders dread these developments (the decline 
of slavery) more than all else. Mr. Seward feels that they are already begin- 
ning to have their influence, and he is exerting himself to destroy the effect 
and keep up the sectional. flame until after the election in November next. We 
detect this in every speech he makes on his western tour. Mr. Seward has 
clothed himself with an idea — the assumption that he is something like a Divine 
Essence — the spirit of progressive freedom on this continent, and many good 
people bow down to him as such. 

" You who take the opposite ground, and whose business it is, give the 
people light on this subject. The people need light ! They are ready to 
receive it. Every ray shed does some good, even at this late moment. Follow 
the demagogues and fanatics, and puncture the wickedest political humbug 
that ever cast its dark and threatening shadow over a great and prosperous 
nation." 

That dark and" threatening shadow has become a reality. 
The reputed author of the idea of the " irrepressible conflict " 
is President of the United States, and the elaborator of that 
idea is his premier, but — where is our country ? 



General Recapitulaton. 

In the foregoing history of Commercial Slavery in Amer- 
ica, the principal endeavor has been to set forth three points, 
namely : 

First. The rise of Commercial Slavery in America. 

Second. The culminating Period of Commercial Slavery in 
America. 

Third. The decline of Commercial Slavery in America. 

In elucidating the first mentioned point, the following facts 
are narrated : 

First. The commencement of the era of Commercial 
Slavery, by the discovery of the west coast of Africa by the 
Portuguese in 1441. 

Second. This discovery of the New World by Columbus in 
1492. 



266 

Third. The destruction of the natives of the West India 
islands, estimated at 4,000,000, by the Spaniards, by which 
a demand for negro slaves was created. 

Fourth. The first importation of negro slaves into Hispani- 
ola by the Spanish in 1501. 

Fifth. The discovery and occupation of the American Con- 
tinent by the commercial nations of Europe — the Spaniards, 
Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Swedes, Danes, etc. 

Sixth. The enslaving of the aborigines on the continent 
by the Spaniards and Portuguese. 

Seventh. The rapid extension of the slave-trade and slav- 
ery throughout the settled portion of the American continent. 

Eighth. The commercial nations of Europe enter upon the 
slave-trade and supply their American colonies, giving it a 
moral support based on the ancient superstitious notion that 
in capturing the heathen and enslaving them, they were sav- 
ing souls. 

Ninth. The European nations protect the slave-trade and 
slavery by legislation and treaties, and follow it up most vig- 
orously as the foundation of their African and American 
commerce for upward of two and a half centuries. 

In elucidating the second point, that of the culminating 
period of commercial slavery in America, which period may 
be said to run from 1775 to the first of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the following facts are stated : 

First. The entire American continent, with the West 
India islands, was slave territory. 

Second. The entire labor or service in all that part of the 
world was performed by negro and Indian slaves. 

Third. All the exports were the products of slave labor. 

Fourth. By royal edicts, legislative enactments and com- 
mon law, the right of man to own property in man was pro- 
tected throughout America in the strongest manner possible. 

Fifth. All the European nations having possessions in 
America, were actively engaged in the slave-trade, and in 
supplying their colonies with slaves. 

Sixth. The moral, legal, territorial, industrial and com- 
mercial status of slavery was complete throughout America. 



267 

Seventh. The number of negro slaves was, in 

1790 3,063,138 

Ditto, Indian slaves, 7,000,000 

Total, slaves, 10,063,138 
Estimated number of free civilized inhabitants 
on the American continent and West India 
Islands in 1790 6,000,000 

Excess of slaves over free inhabitants . . • . . 4,563,138 
The third point — the decline of Commercial Slavery in 
America — is represented in the following facts : 

First. Initiatory measures of abolition by Rhode Island 
in 1770 ; by Virginia in 1778 ; by Pennsylvania in 1780 ; by 
Maryland in 1783 ; by Connecticut in 1784 ; by North Caro- 
lina in 1786 ; by Canada in 1793 ; in all of which slavery 
became gradually extinct, except in Virginia, Maryland and 
North Carolina. 

Slavery abolished in Massachusetts in 1783 and in New 
Hampshire in 1792. Slavery prohibited in the Northwest 
Territory by Ordinance of 1787. 

Second. Slave-trade abolished by Denmark in 1803 ; by 
the United States in 1808 ; by England in 1808 ; by Holland 
in 1814 ; by France in 1819 ; by Spain in 1822 ; by Portugal 
in 1823 ; by Brazil, 1850. 

TJtird. The liberation of the aborigines inhabiting Span- 
ish America and held in slavery, numbering 7,000,000 and 
upward, during the Spanish American revolutions, extend- 
ing from 1810 to 1825. 

Fourth; The abolition of negro slavery by New Grenada 
and Venezuela in 1823 ; by Guatemala, comprising the Cen- 
tral American States, in 1824 : by La Plata gradually, com- 
mencing in 1813 ; by Mexico and Yucatan in 1829 ; by Chili 
in 1833. By Peru gradually, commencing in 1821, and be- 
coming extinct in 1855. 

Fifth. The abolition of slavery in the English colonies by 
England in 1834, by which 781,697 slaves were liberated ; the 
abolition of slavery in the French colonies by France in 1848, by 



268 

which 239,937 slaves were liberated ; the abolition of slavery 
in the Danish Colonies by Denmark in 1848 ; the abolition of 
slavery in the Swedish Colonies by Sweden in 1847 ; the 
abolition of slavery in Dutch Guiana by Holland in 1851. 

Sixth. The measures taken by the government of Brazil, 
in accordance with public opinion, to substitute free for slave 
labor, by which slavery is gradually becoming extinct in that 
great empire. 

Seventh. The decline of slavery in the American States of 
Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and in Western Yirginia ; the 
settlement of Western Texas by free laborers, and the gene- 
ral decay of the institution throughout the South, as eluci- 
dated by the U. S. census statistics. 

Eighth. The total disappearance of the moral status of 
slavery throughout the civilized world. 

Grand Results. 

The following are the grand results which thus far indi- 
cate the decline of commercial slavery in America : 

Area of the American Continent and West Indian Square Miles. 

Islands, all slave territory up to 1*183 14,130,208 

Present area of slave territory in America. square Miles. 

Brazil 2,973,406 

Cuba and Porto Rico 46,258 

Southern States, U. S 875,012 

3,894,676 14,130,208 

3,894,676 

Gain of free uoon slave territory in America since 1783 . . . 11,235,532 



Slave population in 1790, Negro 3,063,138 

Indian 7,000,000 

Free civilized population in America 1790 .... 6,000,000 

6,000,000 10,063,138 
6,000,000 



Excess of slave above free civilized population in America, 1790 4,063,138 



269 



Free civilized population in America, 1860, . 


. 


65,000,000 


Slave population in America, 1860 : 






Southern States, U. S. 


3,999,353 




Brazil . . . . . . 


2,800,000 




Cuba 


330,425 




Porto Rico .... 


50,000 





1,119,118 65,000,000 
1,119.118 



Excess of free civilized population over slave population in 

America, 1860 . . 51,820,222 

We cannot, at this moment, give with any degree of accu- 
racy the amount of exports from all America during the lat- 
ter part of the eighteenth century, when slavery was univer- 
sally prevalent. It is sufficient to know that they were all 
the product of slave labor, a large amount being in the 
precious metals taken from the mines in Spanish America by 
the Indian slaves. 

The amount of exports from America, in 1860, may be stated with accu- 
racy, in round numbers, at $100,000,000 

Of this amount, slave products are : 

Brazil, $50,000,000 

Cuba, 44,000,000 

Porto Rico, ..... 6,000,000 

Southern States, U. S., . . 150,000,000 



$250,000,000 $100,000,000 
250,000,000 



Excess of free over slave labor in articles of export, . . $450,000,000 

This is a gain of nearly two-thirds in free over slave labor, 
within sixty years. 

THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

The extent of the slave-trade, from 1500 to 1850, a period 
of 350 years, we estimate as follows : 






270 



From 
Prom 
From 
From 
From 
From 
From 
From 



1500 to 
1525 to 
1550 to 
1600 to 
1650 to 
HOO to 
1750 to 
1800 to 



1525, 
1550, 
1600, 
1650, 
1700, 
1750/ 
1800, 
1850, 



Number 


of negroes imported into 




America per annum. 


TotaL 


500 


12,500 




5,000 


125,000 




. 15,000 


750,000 




20,000 


1,000,000 




35,000 


1,750,000 




60,000 


3,000,000 




80,000 


4,000,000 




65,000 


3,250,000 



Total importation of negro slaves into America during a period 

of 350 years ' . 13,887,500 

We put forth this estimate with the remark, that any 
statement of the number of negro slaves imported into Ame- 
rica since its discovery by Columbus, must be based mainly 
on conjecture, guided by such facts as can be gathered in 
history. In the first place, no thorough or complete official 
records of this traffic were kept by the nations engaged in 
it. Their interests in the business required a suppression of 
definite information relative to its prosecution. Those com- 
panies who held the legal monopoly of the trade, invariably 
transcended the prescribed limits, and it is well known that 
outside parties — the contrabandistas — imported far more 
slaves than the legal monopolists. Special privileges — such 
as taking a certain number of negro servants and laborers to 
the New World — were also granted to Spanish discoverers, 
conquerors and colonists. In numerous ways, therefore, the 
number of negro slaves taken to America reached an amount, 
every year, of which the various parties engaged in the trade, 
and the authorities, were entirely unconscious ; and in giving 
in round numbers, say 14,000,000, as the sum total of negro 
slaves imported into America, we are probably below the 
mark rather than above it. 

But now, the only remaining trade in slaves is with Cuba, 
and the importation cannot exceed 10,000 per annum, and 
in a very few years the trade will probably be entirely ex- 
tinct ; and then, according to our calculation, the progressive 
working of the inexorable laws that regulate capital and 



271 

labor, will peacefully exterminate slavery among the com- 
mercial nations within fifty years. 

CONCLUSION. 

The foregoing history of the Rise and Decline of Commer- 
cial Slavery in America has been written within a period 
of time too limited, and in the midst of business occupations 
much at variance with a work of this nature. Consequently, 
we have not been able to give the subject that extensive re- 
search and careful study which its magnitude and importance 
demand. Such facts as are given, however, we believe can 
be fully relied on as correct. The line of argument running 
through these facts is another matter. Readers will coin- 
cide or dissent as their judgment or their prejudices dictate. 
What is written herein is addressed to the common sense of 
peoples, without regard to the prejudices of party, sect, or 
nation. 

Any discussion of the Missouri Compromise, the Wilmot 
Proviso, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lecompton" or Anti- 
Lecompton, etc., etc., has been purposely omitted, as they 
are considered outside issues — so many bread pills, in fact, 
administered to the patient who imagined himself sick, and 
haying no effect whatsoever on the extension or restriction of 
slavery in this country. 

In writing the history of Commercial Slavery in America, 
the first endeavor has been to exhibit the rise and decline of 
the institution in all the nakedness of truth — how it arose, 
in the first place, on the necessity created by cruelty and in- 
justice, and was sustained by the superstitious notion that the 
heathen descendants of Ham were destined to serve the 
Christian descendants of Japhet — and how it declined, and 
is declining, in obedience to the common law of nations and 
of society. 

The great motive in writing this history has been to ex- 
pose the folly of the postulate set up by the South that sla- 
very can go here and go there, and the acceptance of that 



■272 

postulate by the North. This is the false issue upon which 
the Union was dissolved. The Abolitionists created it in the 
first place, and the unprincipled politicians called into exis- 
tence by that class of fanatics have kept it alive for their own 
selfish purposes, and it is still their great political hobby. 

The postulate we set up is, that slavery has got its limit on 
this continent ; that so long as the slave-trade is kept down, no 
amount of favorable legislation, and a bounty added thereto, 
can carry slavery into any of the United States territory where 
slavery does not already exist, or into the countries beyond it. 

When we have the great fact in view, that with all the 
excitement, all the legislation upon the institution, pro and 
con., practical slavery has not gained one foot in acquired 
territory since the purchase of the territory of Louisiana, by 
Mr. Jefferson, in 1803, except a corner of Texas, but, on 
the contrary, has lost a large part of what was originally 
slave territory, it passes our comprehension how an intelli- 
gent people, as the Americans are said to be, can be wrought 
up to the delirious point of self-destruction over a phantom 
issue, by wicked fanatics and unprincipled politicians. But 
such, in our view, is the fact ; and unless the American people 
pause and reflect, unless the public mind educates itself anew, 
and takes an entirely different course of thought and action 
than that which it has been led to adopt for the last thirty 
years, the present generation is lost past all redemption. 

The prospect now is, that this ruinous struggle over a hypo- 
thesis will be carried into Mexico, and the foregoing history 
of slavery in America has be"en written with special refer- 
ence to the question of extending the institution over the 
neighboring republic, a question now uppermost in the public 
mind, and one which has a direct bearing on the question, 
"Is Mexican nationality destined to be extinguished?" a sub- 
ject opened in Mexican Papers, No. 4, and which we desire 
maybe considered as continued in this publication. 

The public mind in the North is kept in a feverish state of 
excitement, by announcements, through the press, that the 
South is devising ways and means to establish slavery in New 



273 

Mexico, Arizona, Southern California, Lower California, 
Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, all of Mexico, Central 
America, etc., etc. The entire press of this country is ab- 
sorbed in the discussion of the subject of slavery extension 
by the Southern Confederacy. By reason of the marvellous 
ignorance of the North relative to the South, the countries 
adjoining, and the question of slavery generally, the public 
mind here is made to run in this channel, without let or 
hindrance. 

With the wretched Kansas struggle fresh in the mind, it 
appears impossible that a people not utterly demoralized, 
morally and politically, should suffer themselves to be led 
into the support of the continuance of that struggle on a 
more extended field. 

Kansas belongs for the most part to that barren slope of 
the Rocky Mountains east, which extends far down into 
Mexico, and in climate, soil, etc., comes within what may be 
termed the range of eccentrics. A fruitful season in the 
limited arable sections is more the exception than the 
general rule. 

Here, when the hand of Providence had written in charac- 
ters too plain to be misunderstood, " slavery shall not come" 
the South, stimulated to audacity by abolition, attempted, in 
the intensity of political fanaticism and selfishness, to establish 
the peculiar institution. The North, with equal political 
fanaticism and selfishness, strongly impregnated with religious 
fanaticism, took up the gauntlet thrown down by the South, 
and thus the two political parties, ignoring the laws of nature 
— of Cod — enter upon a contest, which history must portray as 
one of the most disgraceful that can be found in the annals 
of civilized nations. 

A horde of border ruffians from the South, of that lawless 
class usually found on every frontier, and owning few or no 
slaves, are the Kansas pioneers of the slavery propagandists. 
They are met by the same class of border ruffians from the 
North, the emissaries of abolition, with the addition of a 
very worthy class of eastern emigrants, fitted out and induced 



274 

to emigrate to Kansas under the auspices of Emigrant Aid 
Societies, by holders of corner lots, and Kansas land speculators 
generally, in the East. These are the parties, and these the 
elements that made up the Kansas strife, the motive of which 
on the part of the originators on either side, had nothing to 
do with any principle of justice, humanity or philanthropy. 

All the favorable legislation in the world, with a bounty of 
fifty dollars per head on every slave taken to Kansas, would 
not have established practical slavery in that territory. And 
yet, Kansas is the Abolition Mecca. " I am on a pilgrimage 
to Kansas where the battle of freedom was fought and won ; 
I must see Kansas before I die \ v said the great demagogue 
of the day, on his stumping tour in the West, just before the 
election. 

What hope is there for a country that gives itself up to 
such stupid, canting demagogism as this ? We have none. 

Freedom or slavery had no more to do with the contest in 
Kansas, than republicanism or monarchy had to do with the 
contest between Heenan and Sayeks. There was a great 
deal more to commend in the Farnborough than in the 
Kansas fight, and the abolitionists would appear to better 
advantage consecrating the sod of the Farnborough ring 
to plug-uglyism with their crocodile tears, than canting 
about the battle of freedom having been fought and won in 
Kansas. 

But it appears almost certain that this ruinous Kansas 
struggle over a miserable abstraction will be carried into 
other lands, to the hazard of creating complications which 
must end in terrible wars, and a reconstruction of the entire 
map of America. 

We believe that those who have perused the previous 
numbers of the Mexican Papers, and who feel interest 
enough in the subject to examine the present number, will 
be able to fully comprehend its politics and its policy. We 
know of no existing political party in the country to which 
the publication can be said to belong j and we know of no 



275 

political journal from. Maine to California, that can, con- 
sistently with its partisanship, give favorable publicity to our 
facts and arguments. They ignore our postulate that slavery 
is on the decline, past all human power of resuscitation, and 
either laud the institution as one of divine origin, just and 
beneficent, or they sustain the abolition party now in power, 
which would, if it could get the means, carry fire and sword 
to every hearth-stone in the South, in the accomplishment of 
its fanatical purposes. 

Our political position, we acknowledge, is sui generis, and 
we have no expectation that the sentiments of this publica- 
tion will meet with much favor at the present moment. 
Years hence, when this ruinous struggle has done its perfect 
work, there may be those who will duly appreciate the fana- 
tical folly of the past. 

At the last Presidential election, we sympathized with the 
smallest party in the struggle, that ridiculed by the abo- 
litionists as the "old woman's party" — the Bell-Everett 
party. We sympathized with everything opposed to the 
Republican candidate, believing his election would prove 
exactly what it has proved — the death-knell of the Union ! 
We desired most ardently that another four years might pass 
without an abolition success, believing such a flood of light 
would be thrown upon the subject by new developments in 
our own and in the surrounding countries, as to ward off the 
ruinous issue forever. 

We regarded the McLane-Ocampo (Mexican) treaty as the 
basis of the most important of these developments. So 
thought the fire-eating and abolition politicians, and they 
trampled it beneath their feet in the Senate of the United 
States. Senators Hammond and Wigfall were conspicuous 
in this matter. Senator William H. Seward, now Secretary 
of State, opposed this treaty with great bitterness, both 
openly and secretly. Senator Hannibal Hamlin, now Vice- 
President of the United States, declared : " My right arm 
shall be cut off inch by inch, before I will vote for that Mexican 
Treaty." 



276 

Had that Mexican treaty been ratified and put in imme- 
diate operation, some of the most dangerous complications 
which now threaten us, never could have arisen. 

But Providence decreed that the present issue should 
come, and every true-hearted American must accept the 
result in deep and bitter sorrow. 

We contend that there is no greater indication that society 
has advanced, than the ground now maintained by the 
civilized world, in relation to the question of human slavery. 
The moral support it derived from an ancient superstition 
has disappeared, and this, with the economical working of 
natural causes, is letting the institution down by the run. 
That Silent Revolution, based on the steam engine, the 
electric telegraph, in short, the application of science to 
mechanics, is doing more than all other causes combined to 
overthrow those degrading superstitions that have enthralled 
the world so long. 

Taking this view of the matter, we contend that the 
American Union has been broken up on the assumption, by 
the two great political parties, that nature can be made to 
turn back upon herself — that God can be forced to retrace 
his footsteps by human legislation; and on this assumption the 
country is going to ruin with fearful velocity. 

The Republican party came into power on this assumption, 
consequently, it cannot stand up to any principle of its plat- 
form, and has no moral force. The Republican adminis- 
tration does not appear to have sufficient common sense to 
judiciously wield any moral power, even could they com- 
mand it. We have no faith that those who have so reck- 
lessly run the ship of State upon the breakers, will ever 
bring her to safe moorings, and the total failure of the pre- 
sent administration in Washington, is a foregone conclusion. 
If their bungling statesmanship does not induce anarchy 
that will drive them from their seats before their legal term 
of office has expired, they may consider themselves exceed- 
ingly fortunate. 

The Southern Confederacy came into existence on the 



277 

same assumption as that of the Republican party, and as a 
confederacy based on slavery, we have no confidence in its 
ultimate success. But for the time being, it has advantages 
over the North ; first, it derives a moral power from the 
revolutionary right given it by abolition. It also derives an 
additional advantage from greater unity and energy of action, 
and superior statesmanship. The great commercial nations 
of Europe, in consideration of their material interests, will 
be forced, not only to recognize the independence of the 
Southern Confederacy, but they must support that confederacy 
by force of arms against northern abolition. Though this 
may not prevent war and anarchy, it will serve the purpose 
of the South, for the moment, in establishing a political exist- 
ence ; and in due time, if peace prevails, a sensible regard for 
their material interests, will doubtless induce them to pro- 
vide for the decent and peaceful death and burial of slavery. 

We do not believe such statesmen as Davis, Toombs, 
Stephens, Iverson, and others in the South, have any 
faith in the permanency of a government or society based on 
slavery, notwithstanding their bold assumptions to the con- 
trary at this moment. Their intention is, doubtless, to get 
beyond the reach of abolition dictation, and then provide for 
emancipation in a safe and wise manner. 

Notwithstanding the recent speech of the Hon. A. H. Ste- 
phens, lauding his new government above all others, because 
it is based on slavery, we do Mr. Stephens the credit to be- 
lieve that he hates the institution most cordially. If there is 
a genuine hatred of slavery anywhere, it is in the South. 
There they curse the institution from the bottom of their 
hearts ; but one of the effects of Northern abolition has been 
to turn this hatred of slavery into the determination to sus- 
tain it at all hazards, right or wrong. Northern abolition 
has closed the Southern mind, and shut out all calm and 
judicious contemplation of the subject, and we believe the 
South will sink negroes, cotton, lands, and country, before 
submitting to the dictation of such characters as Garrison, 
Phillips, the Tappans, Fred. Douglass, Giddings, Greeley, 



278 

Lincoln, Seward, and a host of lesser lights in the black army 
of abolition. Our knowledge of the spirit that animates these 
parties, and our appreciation of the luxury of independence, 
causes us to sympathize, heart and soul, with the South on 
this point. 

There are, doubtless, some in South Carolina who believe 
heaven is .based on slavery ; nevertheless, we venture to assert 
it as our belief, that in the ordinary course of events, South 
Carolina will be the first State of the present Southern Con- 
federacy to initiate measures of emancipation. 

But whatever may be the relative condition and position 
of the two confederacies as they now stand, it is useless to 
deny that the condition of affairs in both sections is in the 
highest degree perilous. It appears to us that the American 
people do not comprehend the magnitude of the revolution 
that is progressing with such tremendous strides. This revo- 
lution struck us at a moment when the country was saturated, 
so to speak, with money and produce — in the very highth 
of our material prosperity. But the process of draining has 
already commenced, and in small and unseen rills, the 
national wealth is beginning to trickle away. Another 
year may bring pinching want where plenty now abounds. 
Our prestige, as a power on earth, is gone, and henceforth 
Americans will go abroad among the nations, hanging their 
heads with shame, and exposed to insult and scorn. 

There is a moral anarchy now prevailing among us that is 
the sure forerunner of the clash of arms. Complications of 
vast import are coming up out of the dark future, and mon- 
ster phantoms are hovering about, pointing to the fleets of 
ever}- commercial nation in Europe in our southern waters 
and the Gulf of Mexico, and their armies on Mexican terri- 
tory, where we shall all be involved in the fierce struggle of 
nationalities, unless the fratricidal strife now raging in the 
United States is at once brought to an end. 

But at the present moment this seems scarcely possible. 
Abolitionism has divided us not only politically, but it has 
cleft the great American heart in twain. Whether it can 



279 

ever be reunited, God only knows. Not until abolitionism 
is put down, shall we have the slightest hope that anything of 
the kind can be accomplished. Not until the disorganizers 
of society, known as abolitionists, agrarians, free-lovers, 
socialists, etc., etc., with all -their isms, hatched out by the 
pestilential heat of licentious liberty in this republic, are 
squelched, shall we have any faith that fraternity, peace, and 
prosperity can be restored to our unhappy country. 

We rest in the hope that a great white Republican party — 
a party purified of the negro and his pestiferous surround- 
ings, and devoted to the great and common interests of our 
great and common country, will rise up and capture it from 
the political harpies who are now revelling in its life-blood. 

In our general remarks upon the Republican party, we are 
not unmindful of the fact that a large portion utterly repudiate 
abolition, and voted the Republican ticket in all sincerity and 
good faith to the country, entirely unconscious of the mischief 
their leaders were perpetrating. There are also prominent 
individuals in this party whom we know and respect, and 
whose friendship we cherish ; but who, from some unfortu- 
nate combination of circumstances, have been induced to 
pursue a course in politics which we feel confident they will 
regret in the future. 

To all such, we would not say one word to irritate or offend, 
and we trust they will so understand it. 

But there are leaders in this party — those who have 
crawled to power by dark and devious ways, subverting 
patriotism, and striking down by stealth every noble object 
that stood between them and their wicked designs, and whose 
greatness and power are derived only from their country's 
ruin — for whom we have no soft or palliative words. They 
have robbed us of our honest pride, as an American citizen, 
and for this alone, we deem it an imperative duty to do all 
that lies in our power to send their names down to posterity in 
unutterable infamy. 



Lb D 25 






